ALVMNVS  BOOK  FVND 


FIGURES  FROM  AMERICAN  HISTORY 


THOMAS    JEFFERSON 

BY 

DAVID  SAVILLE  MUZZEY,  PH.D. 


FIGURES  FROM  AMERICAN  HISTORY 
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THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

By  David  Saville  Muzzey 
JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

By  Armistead  C.  Gordon 

Published  Later 

ALEXANDER  HAMILTON 

By  Henry  Ford  Jones 
ROBERT  E.  LEE 

By  Dr.  Douglas  Southall  Freeman 

Further  volumes  will  follow  at  short  intervals, 
the  list  including  WASHINGTON,  LINCOLN, 
WEBSTER,  GRANT,  CLEVELAND,  and  others. 


CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS,  PUBLISHERS 


FIGURES   FROM   AMERICAN  HISTORY 


THOMAS    JEFFERSON 


BY 


DAVID  SAVILLE  MUZZEY,  Pn.D. 

ASSOCIATE  PROFESSOR  OF  HI8TORT  IN  COLUMBIA   TTNIYEB8ITY 
NEW   TOBK 


Ab  eo  libertas  a  quo  spiritus 
He  that  gave  us  life  gave  us  liberty 


NEW  YORK 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

1918 


"£• 


M 


COPYRIGHT,  1918,  BT 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

Published  September,  1918 


PREFACE 


THE  story  of  illustrious  men  cannot  be  too  often 
retold.  Like  great  outstanding  mountain-peaks, 
these  men  invite  description  but  elude  definition; 
they  provoke  examination  but  defy  exhaustion. 
The  changing  hues  of  political  atmosphere,  the 
shifting  perspective  of  social  and  economic  theories, 
combine  witft  the  peculiar  equipment,  apperception, 
penchants,  and  even  (alas  !)  prejudices  of  each  bi 
ographer  to  make  any  and  every  interpretation  of 
his  hero  only  a  partial,  restricted,  and  temporary 
one.  We  grasp  so  much  of  the  spirit  as  we  can  com 
prehend  —  and  as  there  are  infinite  gradations  of 
comprehension,  so  there  are  infinite  varieties  of 
portrayal.  The  wonder  is  not  that  there  are  so 
many  different  interpretations  of  the  lives  of  great 
men,  but  rather  that  there  is  so  large  a  consensus  > 
in  the  case  of  a  great  number  of  them. 

Of  this  number,  however,  Thomas  Jefferson  is 
not  one.  Though  placed  by  the  common  consent 
of  scholars  in  the  first  class  of  American  statesmen, 
with  Franklin,  Washington,  Hamilton,  Webster, 
and  Lincoln,  Jefferson  seems  far  less  willing  than 
any  of  his  illustrious  compeers  to  fall  into  his  defini 
tive  place  of  honor.  Washington  and  Lincoln  were 
maligned  in  life  as  no  other  Americans  have  been; 


vi  PREFACE 

their  abuse,  like  their  merit,  was  superlative.  But 
to-day  their  merit  alone  remains,  acknowledged  by 
all.  No  one  contests  Benjamin  Franklin's  position 
as  our  first  great  statesman,  philosopher,  and  scien 
tist — the  man  who  raised  common  sense  to  the  level 
of  genius,  and  made  the  name  America  known  and 
respected  in  the  world.  Few  to-day,  even  though 
they  may  detest  his  politics,  would  deny  to  Alex 
ander  Hamilton  the  title  of  the  master  genius  of 
American  finance  or  refuse  to  acknowledge  the 
unique  contribution  of  the  Federalist  to  political 
theory.  But  Thomas  Jefferson  is  still  a  subject 
for  acrimonious  criticism  and  chivalrous  defense. 
The  campaign  controversies  of  the  year  1800  have 
not  yet  died  down  to  silence.  The  perpetuation  or 
the  refutation  of  slanders,  objurgations,  innuendoes 
occupies  even  the  latest  of  Jefferson's  biographers. 
The  very  men  often  who  acclaim  him  cannot  re 
frain  from  sneers;  and  even  his  bitter  political 
enemies  lean  on  his  authority.  A  Populist  senator 
of  the  last  generation  remarked  that  "every  opinion 
delivered  in  the  Senate  of  the  United  States  was 
backed  by  a  quotation  from  Thomas  Jefferson." 
His  name  is  cited  more  often  than  any  other  in  our 
political  platforms,  his  portrait  hangs  with  Wash 
ington's  and  Lincoln's  in  our  convention  halls,  his 
principles  are  appealed  to  as  the  creed  of  every  true 
American.  Surely,  there  is  no  stranger  problem  of 
our  political  psychology  than  this  mixture  of  venera- 


PREFACE  vii 

tion  and  vituperation,  of  inspiration  and  exaspera 
tion,  still  provoked  by  the  mention  of  the  name  of 
Thomas  Jefferson. 

Suggestions  in  explanation  of  this  anomaly  will 
appear  frequently  in  the  following  pages.  Here  I 
can  only  urge  the  obvious  but  too  often  neglected 
truism  that  the  excellences  of  men  are  diverse,  and 
that  genius,  as  Lord  Acton  said  long  ago,  deserves 
to  be  judged  by  its  own  best  performance.  To  call 
Kreisler  a  second-rate  fiddler  because  he  cannot 
sing  like  Caruso,  or  Botticelli  a  mere  dauber  because 
he  does  not  paint  in  the  style  of  Raphael,  appears 
at  once  as  arrant  nonsense;  yet  many  a  respectable 
historian  has  based  his  whole  condemnatory  judg 
ment  of  Jefferson  on  the  fact  that  he  was  not  like 
Hamilton.  Indeed,  no  more  astonishingly  persistent 
prejudice  can  be  found  in  our  American  historiog 
raphy  than  the  treatment  of  these  two  great  men 
like  twin  buckets  in  a  well,  alternately  elevated  or  de 
pressed  according  as  an  historian  of  the  Federalist  or 
the  Republican  school  manipulated  the  chain.  Jef 
ferson  was  in  public  life  almost  continuously  from 
his  entrance  into  the  Virginia  House  of  Burgesses 
in  1769  to  his  retirement  from  the  presidency  in 
1809.  During  less  than  four  of  those  forty  years 
was  he  in  direct  contact  with  Hamilton  in  the  stormy 
scenes  around  Washington's  cabinet  table.  Grave 
and  important  differences  between  these  men  were 
there  revealed,  to  be  sure;  disagreement  on  the 


viii  PREFACE 

extent  and  nature  of  the  powers  of  the  central  govern 
ment,  on  the  relative  value  of  urban-industrial 
and  agricultural  communities,  on  the  capacity  of 
the  common  people  for  self-government.  But  im 
portant  as  these  matters  are,  they  by  no  means 
exhaust  the  interests  of  Jefferson's  many-sided  ac 
tivity;  nor  should  they  be  dwelt  on,  as  they  often 
have  been,  to  the  exclusion  or  obscuration  of  his 
splendid  services  to  our  diplomacy  and  public  law, 
to  the  reform  of  inveterate  social  despotisms,  to 
the  clarification  of  the  political  philosophy  of  democ 
racy,  and  to  the  advancement  of  freedom  of  thought, 
speech,  and  creed  through  a  widely  extended  system 
of  public  education. 

It  has  been  my  desire  to  present  the  whole  man 
Jefferson  in  this  modest  volume,  and  to  present  him 
as  far  as  possible  in  the  first  person.  The  portrait 
need  not  be  less  faithful  because  the  canvas  is  small; 
though  the  form  and  size  of  my  book  are  them 
selves  a  sufficient  disclaimer  of  any  attempt  to  add 
an  "original  contribution"  to  the  mass  of  Jeffer- 
sonian  scholarship.  I  have  wished  only  to  write  a 
truthful  and  readable  account  of  the  life  of  a  great 
American  citizen,  who  served  his  fellow-citizens  long 
and  devotedly  in  public  office,  and  who  will  continue 
to  serve  his  fellow-men  so  long  as  freedom  is  loved 

and  fought  for. 

D.  S.  M. 

COLUMBIA  UNIVERSITY,  NEW  YORK, 
1918. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGB 

I.    EQUIPMENT  AND  APPRENTICESHIP 1 

II.    THE  DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.    ...  26 

III.  THE  REFORM  OF  THE  VIRGINIA  CODE.   ...  52 

IV.  JEFFERSON  AS  WAR  GOVERNOR 75 

V.    THE  MISSION  TO  FRANCE 101 

VI.    IN  WASHINGTON'S  CABINET 135 

VII.    THE  REPUBLICAN  TRIUMPH 172 

VIII.    JEFFERSON  THE  EXPANSIONIST 213 

IX.    THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  NEUTRALITY 246 

X.    JEFFERSON  IN  RETIREMENT 286 

INDEX  .   .   ,  315 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

CHAPTER  I 
EQUIPMENT  AND  APPRENTICESHIP 

But  exercise  produces  habit,  and  in  the  instance  of  which  we  speak 
the  exercise  being  of  the  moral  feelings,  produces  a  habit  of  thinking  and 
acting  virtuously.  (Jefferson  to  Robert  Skipwith,  August  3, 1771.) 

A  FEW  years  after  the  affable  and  indolent  King 
Charles  II  returned  from  his  "travels"  and  took  up 
his  abode  in  the  royal  palace  of  Whitehall,  which 
had  been  polluted  by  the  presence  of  Oliver  and  his 
saints,  a  certain  William  Randolph,  gentleman,  from 
Warwickshire,  who  had  sacrificed  most  of  his  patri 
mony  in  the  defense  of  Charles's  martyred  father, 
came  to  the  royal  colony  of  Virginia  and  started  his 
fortunes  anew  at  Turkey  Island,  on  the  broad  banks 
of  the  lower  James.  Randolph  traced  his  descent 
through  a  long  line  of  nobles,  warriors,  and  states 
men  to  the  royal  Earl  of  Murray,  half-brother  of  the 
ill-fated  Mary,  Queen  of  the  Scots.  He  married 
Mary  Isham,  daughter  of  a  baronet,  and  from  this 
distinguished  couple  descended  a  goodly  number  of 

l 


JEFFERSON 


the  men  who  have  made  the  name  of  the  Old 
Dominion  illustrious.1  In  the  year  1738  a  daughter 
of  the  house  of  Randolph  left  the  rich  halls  of  the 
"tidewater  aristocracy"  to  follow  her  more  plebeian 
husband  up  the  river  to  his  frontier  farm  of  a  thou 
sand  acres  in  the  foot-hills  of  the  Blue  Ridge,  where 
five  years  later  she  became  the  mother  of  Thomas 
Jefferson. 

The  Jeffersons  could  make  no  boast  of  gentle 
blood,  but  their  yeoman  stock  was  not  without 
honor  in  the  colony.  Their  ancestor  had  come  from 
Wales,  so  the  tradition  ran,  from  beneath  the  shadow 
of  Mount  Snowdon.  A  Jefferson  had  sat  for 
Flower  de  Hundred  in  the  famous  House  of  Bur 
gesses  convened  by  Governor  Yeardley  in  the  little 
church  at  Jamestown  in  1619  —  the  first  legislative 
body  on  the  soil  of  America;  and  Jeffersons  of  the 
seventeenth  century  were  accepted  as  sons-in-law 
by  the  burgesses  and  even  by  a  speaker  of  the  house. 
But  the  true  founder  of  the  family  was  the  man  who 
in  1738  took  Jane  Randolph  into  the  wilderness, 
"where  the  trails  of  the  hostile  Monacons  or  Tusca- 
roras  were  yet  fresh  on  the  lands."  Peter  Jefferson, 

1  Besides  the  Randolphs  themselves  (Peyton,  first  president  of 
the  Continental  Congress;  John  the  eccentric,  of  Roanoke;  Edmund, 
attorney-general  and  secretary  of  state  in  Washington's  cabinet); 
William  Stith,  the  historian  of  Virginia;  John  Marshall,  for  thirty- 
four  years  chief  justice  of  the  supreme  court;  Richard  Bland,  the 
celebrated  Revolutionary  leader;  Robert  E.  Lee,  the  idol  of  the 
Southern  Confederacy,  and  Thomas  Jefferson  could  trace  their  de 
scent  directly  to  the  aristocratic  ancestors  of  Turkey  Island. 


EQUIPMENT  AND  APPRENTICESHIP      3 

then  thirty  years  of  age,  was  the  finest  type  of  the 
American  pioneer — tall  and  straight,  strong  as  an 
Homeric  god,  without  a  drop  of  fear  or  meanness 
in  his  blood,  honest  as  the  daylight,  industrious, 
public-spirited,  sociable,  and  intensely  human.  He 
had  had  little  schooling,  but  his  innate  nobility  of 
mind  drew  him  to  the  companionship  of  the  noblest 
authors.  Addison,  Swift,  and  Shakespeare  were  fa 
vorites,  whose  works  he  delighted  to  read  aloud  to 
his  family  around  the  evening  fire  of  logs.  Honors 
and  moderate  wealth  came  to  him  as  the  years 
passed.  He  was  made  a  justice  of  the  peace  and 
surveyor  for  the  new  county  of  Albemarle,  in  which 
his  lands  lay,  then  was  appointed  colonel  of  the 
militia  of  his  county,  and  finally,  in  the  disastrous 
year  of  Braddock's  defeat  (1755),  he  was  elected  a 
member  of  the  Virginia  House  of  Burgesses.  He 
survived  this  crowning  honor  but  two  years,  dying 
suddenly  on  August  17,  1757,  near  his  fiftieth  birth 
day. 

Thomas  Jefferson  was  fourteen  years  old  when 
his  father  died,  and  was  already  showing  the  happy 
result  of  the  mixture  of  the  blood  of  the  Jeffersons 
and  the  Randolphs  by  the  blend  of  strength  and 
grace  in  his  nature.  From  Peter  Jefferson  he  had 
his  tall  frame  and  serious  mind,  his  capacity  for  labor, 
his  self-reliance,  and  above  all,  the  robust  demo 
cratic  faith  of  the  frontier.  At  the  same  time  the 
gentler  qualities  of  the  Randolph  blood  appeared  in 


4  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

a  certain  suavity  of  manner  and  extreme  delicacy  of 
taste,  in  his  idealism,  his  musical  appreciation,  his 
"almost  feminine  sensitiveness."  He  could  have 
appreciated  Goethe's  famous  quatrain,  except  for 
the  last  infinitive: 


"Vom  Vater  hab'  ich  die  Statur, 
Des  Lebens  ernstes  Fuhren; 
Vom  Miitterchen  die  froh'  Natur, 
Die  Lust  zu  fabuliren." 


Like  many  a  "self-made"  man  who  has  reached 
easy  circumstances,  Peter  Jefferson  wanted  his  son 
to  enjoy  the  education  which  he  himself  had  missed. 
He  left  special  instructions  that  Thomas  should  have 
a  thorough  training  in  the  classics,  and  the  boy's 
tutors  carried  out  the  father's  will  with  zeal;  for  to 
the  end  of  his  days  Jefferson  protested  that  he  would 
rather  have  been  deprived  of  the  paternal  estate 
than  to  have  missed  his  classics^  He  proved  the 
truth  of  Cicero's  panegyric  on  Archias  by  making 
those  studies  the  food  of  youth  and  the  joy  of  old 
age,  the  adornment  of  his  prosperity  and  the  solace 
of  his  adversity.  About  two  and  a  half  years  after 
his  father's  death  the  young  Jefferson  wrote  a  short, 
businesslike  note  to  his  guardian,  John  Harvey,  sug 
gesting  that  it  might  be  better  for  his  serious  appli 
cation  to  study,  for  his  wider  acquaintance  with  men 
and  books,  and  for  the  economy  of  the  household 


EQUIPMENT  AND  APPRENTICESHIP      5 

at  Shadwell1  if  he  went  away  to  college.  So  in  1760 
the  young  man  of  seventeen  rode  down  the  river  to 
Williamsburg  and  entered  William  and  Mary  Col 
lege,  next  to  Harvard  the  oldest  college  in  the  colo 
nies. 

Williamsburg  was  not  a  very  imposing  town,  with 
its  two  hundred  houses  and  its  unpaved  streets, 
across  whose  deep  mud-gullies  the  pedestrian  picked 
his  ca'reful  way.  But  it  was  the  capital  of  the  col 
ony,  where  the  burgesses  met  and  where  the  gov 
ernor's  mansion  stood  as  the  centre  of  the  social  life 
of  the  tidewater  aristocracy.  It  was  a  decided  event 
in  the  life  of  the  impressionable  lad  from  the  pied 
mont  region  when  he  was  taken  up  by  his  fashion 
able  relatives  and  friends  at  the  capital.  He  grati 
fied  his  passion  for  riding,  attended  parties,  from 
which  he  carried  into  his  class-rooms  distracting 
thoughts  of  Virginia  beauties,  and  even  became  a 
member  of  a  little  club  of  four  who  met  regularly 
around  the  dinner-table  of  the  convivial  governor, 
Fauquier.  He  was  somewhat  shocked  when  he 
made  a  report  of  his  first  winter's  expenses  to  his 
guardian,  to  find  how  much  his  innocent  dissipations 
had  cost;  and  for  amends  made  the  very  honorable 
suggestion  that  the  sum  be  charged  exclusively  to 

1  Shadwell  was  the  name  of  the  house  which  Peter  Jefferson  built 
on  the  Rivanna,  given  in  honor  of  his  bride,  Jane  Randolph,  who 
was  born  in  the  parish  of  Shadwell,  London.  The  mansion  at  Shad- 
well  was  burned  in  February,  1770,  shortly  after  Jefferson  had  begun 
the  work  on  Monticello. 


6  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

his  own  share  of  the  paternal  inheritance.  The  next 
year  he  made  a  more  substantial  sort  of  amends  in 
devotion  to  his  work. 

A  youth  of  less  sense  and  character  than  Jefferson, 
without  rebuke  or  restraint  from  his  guardian,  would 
have  had  his  head  turned  by  the  flattering  notice  of 
the  Williamsburg  aristocrats,  and  would  probably 
have  considered  it  the  most  manly  thing  to  do  to 
imitate  the  governor  in  his  devotion  to  the  gaming 
table.  Many  years  later,  when  he  was  President  of 
the  United  States,  Jefferson  wrote  a  letter  to  his 
grandson,  who  was  away  from  home  at  school,  warn 
ing  him  of  the  dangers  which  he  himself  had  escaped, 
and  (like  Warren  Hastings,  reviewing  his  career  hi 
India),  expressing  wonder  at  his  own  "moderation" 
in  the  "various  sorts  of  bad  company  with  which  he 
[I]  associated  from  time  to  time."  The  letter  has 
furnished  a  good  deal  of  amusement  for  Jefferson's 
hostile  critics,  who  see  in  it  only  a  pedant's  didactic 
sermon  on  his  own  extraordinary  and  precocious 
sagacity.  But  such  a  judgment  only  returns  on  the 
head  of  the  critic.  Jefferson's  mastery  of  his  own 
spirit  in  this  year  of  his  first  choice  of  the  paths  of 
Heracles  in  Williamsburg  was  perhaps  the  most  sig 
nificant  act  of  his  whole  long  life.  With  the  begin 
ning  of  his  second  and  last  year  at  the  college,  he 
threw  himself  into  his  work  with  wonderful  single 
ness  of  purpose,  his  "assault  on  omniscience"  whi 
ning  for  him  the  college  degree  at  the  end  of  the 


EQUIPMENT  AND  APPRENTICESHIP      7 

year.  Probably  this  rapid  success  tells  us  more  of 
the  standards  of  scholarship  at  William  and  Mary 
than  of  the  actual  intellectual  attainments  of  Jeffer 
son  at  the  age  of  eighteen;  but  the  important  fact 
remains  that  he  had  dedicated  himself,  with  a 
fidelity  that  never  weakened,  to  the  jealous  service 
of  the  goddess  of  truth. 

After  his  graduation  Jefferson  began  the  study  of /- 
law  in  the  office  of  George  Wythe,  one  of  the  most 
brilliant  ornaments  of  the  Virginia  bar,  the  privilege 
of  whose  professional  guidance  was  afterward  shared 
by  Jefferson's  younger  kinsman,  John  Marshall,  and 
also  by  Henry  Clay.  Wythe  was  attracted  at  once 
to  the  promising  young  student,  who  many  years 
later,  on  the  verge  of  eighty,  wrote  in  reminiscent 
gratitude:  "Mr.  Wythe  continued  to  be  my  faithful 
and  beloved  Mentor  in  youth,  and  my  most  af 
fectionate  friend  through  life."  The  breadth  and 
profundity  of  Jefferson's  knowledge  of  law,  as 
shown  in  his  reform  of  the  code  of  Virginia,  in  his 
diplomatic  correspondence  in  France,  and  in  his 
despatches  as  secretary  of  state,  are  sufficient  testi 
mony  to  the  use  he  made  of  the  privilege  of  the 
advice  and  example  of  George  Wythe. 

If  Jefferson's  apprenticeship  in  the  law  was  long, 
it  was  because  of  ,,his  passion  for  thoroughness. 
Every  step  in  knowledge  won  opened  his  view  on  a 
wider  vista  of  knowledge  to  be  attained.  He  was 
not  content  with  accumulating  facts  and  cases.  Be- 


8  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

neath  the  harsh  style  and  blunt  reasoning  of  Coke 
on  Littleton  (the  "dull  old  scoundrel")  he  detected 
and  approved  the  political  philosophy  of  the  Whigs; 
while  he  thought  that  the  student  of  Blackstone 
would  only  "slip  backward  into  Toryism"  on  his 
smooth  phrases.  From  the  beginning  he  took  the 
study  of  the  law  as  an  historical  training  in  the  prin 
ciples  of  jurisprudence,  and  not  simply  a  hasty  pro 
fessional  equipment  to  fit  him  to  win  cases  in  the 
courts  of  Virginia.  His  friend,  the  jovial,  adven 
turous,  confident  Patrick  Henry,  was  admitted  to 
the  bar  after  studying  law  for  six  weeks;  but  Jeffer 
son  did  not  apply  for  a  license  until  1767,  five  years 
after  he  had  entered  Wythe's  office. 

Jefferson  practised  law  for  seven  years,  until,  as 
he  says  in  his  Memoir,  "the  Revolution  shut  up  the 
courts  of  justice."  He  was  not  a  good  barrister,  for 
he  lacked  all  the  gifts  of  the  rostra.  His  voice  was 
thin,  with  a  tendency  to  huskiness  after  long  speak 
ing;  contentious  assertion  was  always  distasteful  to 
him;  and  far  from  enjoying  the  clash  of  forensic 
arms,  he  shrank  by  a  native  fastidiousness  from 
even  the  disturbance  of  a  private  altercation.  He 
seems  also,  in  his  later  years  at  least,  not  to  have 
had  a  very  high  opinion  of  lawyers.  In  a  letter 
written  from  Monticello  to  his  friend  David  Camp 
bell,  in  1810,  he  contrasts  the  satisfaction  it  must 
give  a  physician  to  look  back  at  the  lives  he  has 
saved  with  the  lawyer's  miserable  recollection  of 


EQUIPMENT  AND  APPRENTICESHIP      9 

the  many  who  "by  his  dexterity  have  been  cheated 
out  of  their  rights  and  reduced  to  beggary."  Cer 
tainly  not  a  very  just  comparison  I  Ten  years  later, 
in  his  Memoir,  he  chides  "the  present  Congress" 
for  its  garrulousness,  but  adds  in  extenuation:  "How 
could  it  be  otherwise  in  a  body  to  which  the  people 
send  one  hundred  and  fifty  lawyers,  whose  trade  it 
is  to  question  everything,  yield  nothing,  and  talk 
by  the  hour?"  Still,  even  if  Jefferson  was  not  a 
very  enthusiastic  lawyer,  his  success  as  an  attorney 
was  far  above  the  average  of  his  day.  Henry  S. 
Randall,  his  most  painstaking  and  exhaustive  biog 
rapher,  has  compiled  a  table  of  his  cases  in  the 
general  court  during  his  seven  years  of  practice. 
They  amount  to  about  a  thousand,  and  the  average 
yearly  income  from  them  was  not  far  from  three 
thousand  dollars. 

In  the  midst  of  his  law  studies  in  Wythe's  office 
Jefferson  came  of  age,  and  celebrated  the  event  in 
characteristic  fashion  by  planting  an  avenue  of  trees 
at  Shadwell.  He  was  now  master  of  the  estate,  for 
by  the  laws  of  entail  and  primogeniture — laws  which 
he  himself  abolished  in  the  reform  of  the  Virginia 
law  code — the  oldest  son  inherited  the  undivided 
property.  Jefferson  was  an  ideal  figure  for  a 
landed  proprietor.  He  was  passionately  fond  of 
country  life,  riding  his  beloved  horses  at  early  morn 
over  his  broad  acres,  watching  with  perennial  en 
thusiasm  the  budding  of  the  trees  and  the  ripening 


10  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

of  the  vegetables,  noting  in  his  closely  written  ac 
count-books  every  item  of  income  and  outgo.  His 
native  gifts  of  intellect  and  grace  of  manner,  supple 
mented  by  a  remarkably  fine  education,  made  him 
a  charming  host;  while  his  genuine  humanitarian 
interest  extended  to  the  meanest  slave  on  his  estate. 
From  the  day  of  his  majority  to  the  day  of  his 
death,  more  than  threescore  years  later,  this  tall, 
sandy-haired  master,  with  eyes  "flecked  with  hazel/ ' 
was  loved  by  his  family,  his  friends,  and  his  servants 
as  few  were  loved  even  in  Virginia,  the  land  of  loyal 
devotions. 

With  his  new  manorial  dignity  Jefferson  took  up 
the  duties  of  a  country  squire.  He  became  a  justice 
of  the  peace  and  a  vestryman  of  the  parish.  He 
also  initiated  his  lifelong  crusade  for  the  improve 
ment  of  material  conditions  through  applied  science, 
by  starting  a  petition  to  the  legislature  for  making 
the  Rivanna  River  a  navigable  highway  for  the 
commerce  of  Albemarle  County. 

Just  at  the  moment  when  Jefferson  was  coming 
into  his  inheritance  the  curtain  rose  on  the  prologue 
to  the  tragedy  of  the  American  Revolution.  George 
Grenville  was  prime  minister  in  a  cabinet  which 
Macaulay  characterizes  as  the  worst  that  had  gov 
erned  England  since  the  revolution  of  1688.  In 
March,  1764,  Grenville  began  to  put  into  operation 
a  plan  for  the  taxation  of  the  American  colonies, 
with  the  threefold  object  of  increasing  the  British 


EQUIPMENT  AND  APPRENTICESHIP    11 

revenue  to  meet  the  large  debt  contracted  in  the 
French  war,  of  restoring  the  vigor  of  the  Navigation 
Acts,  which  bound  the  commerce  of  the  colonies  by 
rules  imposed  by  the  British  Parliament,  and  of 
raising  money  to  defray  the  expenses  of  "  defending, 
protecting,  and  securing  the  King's  dominion  in 
America,"  "so  happily  enlarged"  by  the  expulsion 
of  the  French  from  the  St.  Lawrence  and  Mississippi 
valleys.  In  addition  to  various  tariff  duties  levied 
by  the  Act  of  April,  1764,  the  ministry  announced  its 
intention  of  imposing  on  the  American  colonies  the 
next  year  an  "internal  tax,"  that  is,  a  tax  not  on 
their  foreign  trade,  which  as  an  "imperial"  matter 
the  colonists  had  been  willing,  at  least  in  theory,  to 
concede,  but  a  tax  on  their  ordinary  business  trans 
actions  within  the  colonies  themselves.  All  lands  of 
legal  and  public  documents,  including  wills,  deeds, 
mortgages,  bills  of  sale,  promissory  notes,  contracts, 
as  well  as  pamphlets,  newspapers,  almanacs,  and 
playing-cards,  were  to  be  subject  to  stamp-duties 
ranging  from  three  pence  to  ten  pounds. 

King  George  approved  the  vigorous  policy  of  his 
new  ministers.  In  proroguing  Parliament  on  the 
19th  of  April — a  day  made  memorable  on  Lexington 
Green  and  at  Concord  Bridge  eleven  years  later  by 
certain  events  not  unconnected  with  the  stamp-tax 
—George  III  complimented  his  ministers  on  "the 
wise  regulations"  which  they  had  adopted  "to  aug 
ment  the  public  revenues  and  unite  the  interests  of 


12  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

the  most  distant  possessions  of  the  crown."  While 
the  King  was  speaking  Thomas  Jefferson  was  per 
haps  musingly  inspecting  the  condition  of  his  newly 
planted  shade-trees  at  Shadwell. 

The  next  spring  the  Stamp  Act  was  passed  through 
Parliament,  with  scarcely  any  debate  in  the  House 
of  Commons  and  without  a  division  in  the  Lords. 
News  of  the  act  reached  America  in  May,  as  the 
session  of  the  Virginia  Burgesses  was  nearing  its 
close.  The  representatives  of  the  old  conservative 
families,  the  Pendletons,  Wythes,  Elands,  and  Ran 
dolphs,  with  all  the  "cyphers  of  aristocracy/'  as 
Jefferson  later  called  them,  were  willing  to  dissolve 
without  a  protest.  There  was  something  sacred 
and  inviolate  to  them  in  an  act  of  Parliament.  But 
Patrick  Henry,  delegate  from  the  upland  county  of 
Louisa,  spoke  out.  He  offered  resolutions  condemn 
ing  the  Stamp  Act,  declaring  that  the  right  of  taxing 
the  colonies  lay  in  their  own  legislative  assemblies, 
and  that  any  attempt  of  the  British  Parliament  to 
usurp  this  right  tended  to  the  destruction  of  liber 
ties  both  here  and  in  England.  He  supported  his 
resolutions  hi  a  fiery  speech  which  drew  cries  of 
"Treason !"  from  the  consternated  aristocrats.  And 
he  carried  his  point  by  a  single  vote. 

Thomas  Jefferson  was  standing  hi  the  lobby  at 
the  door  of  the  hall  of  the  burgesses  when  Henry 
made  his  speech,  and  was  still  under  the  spell  of 
that  Homeric  eloquence  when  his  kinsman,  Peyton 


EQUIPMENT  AND  APPRENTICESHIP    13 

Randolph,  attorney-general  of  the  colony,  came 
storming  out  of  the  door  with  a  vow  that  he  would 
have  given  a  hundred  guineas  for  the  one  vote 
needed  to  kill  the  resolutions.  It  was  a  red-letter 
day  in  Jefferson's  life — one  of  those  rare  moments 
v  whose  influence  lasts  to  the  grave.  Forty-five  years 
later  Jefferson  wrote  to  his  friend  William  Wirt, 
who  was  preparing  a  biography  of  Patrick  Henry: 
"By  those  resolutions  Mr.  Henry  took  the  lead  out 
of  the  hands  of  those  who  had  heretofore  guided 
the  proceedings  of  the  House.  .  .  .  Subsequent 
events  favored  the  policy  of  the  bolder  spirits  .  .  . 
with  whom  I  went  on  all  points." 

Four  years  later  Jefferson  was  elected  to  the 
House  of  Burgesses  from  Albemarle  County.  Much 
water  had  flowed  under  the  political  bridges  mean 
while.  The  British  Parliament  had  repealed  the 
Stamp  Act  in  1766,  but,  under  the  spur  of  Charles 
Townshend's  mocking  provocation,  had  returned  to 
the  charge  the  next  year  and  imposed  a  fresh  set  of 
duties  on  colonial  imports,  together  with  a  declara 
tion  of  the  legality  of  writs  of  assistance,  and  a 
general  tightening  up  of  the  customs  control.  Mas 
sachusetts  had  protested  in  a  circular  letter  to  the 
colonies,  drawn  up  by  Samuel  Adams,  and  Lord 
Hillsborough  had  ordered  the  unruly  legislature  of 
Massachusetts,  through  Governor  "Bernard,  to  re 
scind  the  letter.  The  legislature  refused  to  obey  by 
a  vote  of  ninety-two  to  seventeen,  and  was  dissolved 


14  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

by  the  governor.  Two  regiments  of  redcoats  were 
brought  from  Halifax  and  quartered  in  Boston 
(1768).  A  few  months  later  (May,  1769)  the  bur 
gesses  of  Virginia  were  convened  to  meet  their  newly 
appointed  governor,  Lord  Botetourt;  but  their 
reply  to  his  inaugural  speech  was  ominous.  The 
"bolder  spirits"  were  in  control.  They  reasserted 
their  determination  to  levy  their  own  taxes,  pro 
tested  against  the  removal  to  England  for  trial  of 
persons  accused  of  treason  in  the  colonies,  and, 
with  unmistakable  indorsement  of  the  behavior  of 
the  Massachusetts  Legislature,  declared  the  right  of 
the  colonies  to  make  their  petitions  for  redress  of 
grievances  an  affair  of  common  colonial  action. 
Jefferson  was  on  the  comrnittee  to  prepare  the  ad 
dress  in  reply  to  the  governor's  speech,  and  at  the 
request  of  his  colleagues  he  drew  up  a  paper.  But 
it  was  not  considered  "sufficiently  amplified"  (which 
probably  meant  "sufficiently  vague")  by  the  more 
conservative  members,  and  Colonel  Nicholas  pre 
pared  one  in  its  place.  Jefferson  *was  somewhat 
chagrined  by  the  incident.  "Being  a  young  man 
as  well  as  a  new  member,"  he  wrote  many  years 
later,  "it  made  on  me  an  impression  proportioned 
to  the  sensibility  of  that  time  of  life." 

Lord  Botetourt  dissolved  the  burgesses  after  a 
session  of  five  days,  but  the  members  reconvened  in 
formally  in  the  Apollo  Room  of  the  Raleigh  Tavern 
and  had  out  their  say.  They  passed  resolutions 


EQUIPMENT  AND  APPRENTICESHIP    15 

boycotting  the  articles  which  were  subject  to  the 
Townshend  duties,  and  discouraged  British  impor 
tations  generally.  They  even  agreed  to  keep  their 
lambs  alive  for  shearing;  they  would  walk  in  home 
spun  rather  than  in  slavery.  Jefferson  was  one  of 
the  most  enthusiastic  advocates  of  these  measures, 
which  were  signed  by  George  Washington,  Patrick 
Henry,  Peyton  Randolph  (now  converted),  and 
about  eighty  other  members  of  the  legislature,  every 
one  of  whom  received  the  indorsement  of  re-election 
by  his  constituents.  Two  or  three  years  of  com 
parative  quiet  in  the  rising  dispute  with  the  mother 
country  followed  the  appointment  of  Lord  North 
as  prime  minister  in  1770,  a  period  in  which,  as  Jef 
ferson  complained,  "our  countrymen  seemed  to  fall 
into  a  state  of  insensibility  to  our  situation." 

But  if  politics  were  dull  there  was  plenty  of  ex 
citement  in  Jefferson's  private  life  during  these 
years.  The  paternal  home  at  Shadwell  was  burned 
to  the  ground  in  the  midwintei  of  1770,  and  nothing 
saved  but  Jefferson's  favorite  fiddle.  The  disaster 
hastened  the  building  of  the  new  mansion  which 
Jefferson  had  already  begun  on  the  favorite  hilltop, 
where  he  used  to  sit  and  read  and  dream  as  a  boy. 
He  called  it  Monticello,  the  "little  mountain,"  and 
the  house  he  built  on  it,  wholly  from  his  own  plans 
and  partly  with  his  own  hands,  is  one  of  the  treasures 
of  our  colonial  architecture.  Only  a  single  pavilion 
of  the  mansion  was  finished,  with  three  or  four 


16  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

small  chambers  above,  when  Jefferson  brought  his 
bride  to  Monticello,  through  a  heavy  snow,  on  New 
Year's  night  of  1772.  She  was  Martha  Skelton,  a 
widow  of  twenty-three,  and  daughter  of  a  prosper 
ous  lawyer  and  proprietor,  John  Wayles.  Her 
father  died  the  year  after  the  wedding,  leaving  her 
property  in  land  (somewhat  encumbered  by  debt) 
and  slaves  that  was  about  equal  to  Jefferson's  own 
estate.  Mrs.  Jefferson  was  extraordinarily  endowed 
with  both  charm  and  sense,  though  her  physical 
strength  began  to  fail  soon  after  her  marriage.  Her 
death  in  1782  broke  a  perfect  union  of  ten  years. 
She  left  no  sons  to  continue  the  name  of  Jefferson, 
and  of  her  five  daughters  only  two  grew  beyond 
babyhood.  These  two — Martha  (Randolph)  and 
Maria  (Eppes),  were  their  father's  constant  solace 
and  joy.  He  never  married  again. 

The  "insensibility"  into  which  Jefferson  feared 
his  country  had  fallen  in  1770  was  roused  to  protest 
in  the  spring  session  of  the  burgesses  in  1773,  and 
again  the  cause  was  news  from  New  England.  The 
British  schooner  Gaspee,  of  eight  guns,  while  chasing 
smugglers  in  Narragansett  Bay,  had  run  aground  on 
a  mud-bank  about  seven  miles  from  Providence,  on 
the  afternoon  of  June  9,  1772.  Late  that  night  the 
stranded  schooner  was  surrounded  by  boat-loads 
of  armed  citizens  of  Providence,  who  easily  over 
powered  the  drowsy  crew  and  burned  the  Gaspee  to 
the  water's  edge.  England's  retaliation  was  an  act 


EQUIPMENT  AND  APPRENTICESHIP    17 

of  Parliament  "for  the  better  securing  and  preserv 
ing  His  Majesty's  dockyards,  magazines,  ships,  am 
munition,  and  stores,"  which  threatened  with  the 
penalty  of  death  any  one  who  should  destroy  the 
least  part  of  His  Majesty's  naval  equipment,  even 
to  a  brass  button  on  an  officer's  coat,  and  gave  the 
court  of  inquiry  in  Rhode  Island  the  power  to  send 
the  accused  to  England  for  trial. 

Indignant  at  this  monstrous  disproportion  be 
tween  the  punishment  and  the  crime,  the  "bolder 
spirits"  among  the  burgesses,  Patrick  Henry,  the 
Lees,  Jefferson,  and  his  brilliant  brother-in-law, 
Dabney  Carr,  held  a  private  evening  meeting  at  the 
Raleigh  Tavern  and  prepared  resolutions  censuring 
the  retaliatory  act  against  Rhode  Island,  and  calling 
for  the  establishment  of  a  standing  committee  of 
correspondence  and  inquiry,  whose  business  it  should 
be  to  keep  informed  of  important  matters  going  on 
in  all  the  American  colonies  and  of  the  measures 
taken  by  Parliament  for  their  regulation.  The  reso 
lutions  were  adopted  unanimously  on  March  12, 
1773,  and  a  committee  of  eight,  including  Jefferson 
and  Carr,  was  appointed.  Governor  Dunmore,  like 
Governor  Botetourt  before  him,  dissolved  the  house. 
But  the  committee  met  in  the  famous  Apollo  Room 
the  next  day  and  sent  their  resolutions  out  to  the 
sister  colonies,  with  the  invitation  to  each  to  ap 
point  a  similar  committee  to  correspond  "on  any 
measures  or  rumors  of  proceedings  tending  to  de- 


18  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

prive  them  of  their  ancient,  legal,  and  constitutional 
rights." 

Still  a  third  time  New  England  provoked  the 
British  Parliament  to  punitive  measures,  and  a 
third  time  Virginia  stood  by  the  northern  colonies. 
The  English  Government,  "blundering  into  a  policy 
one  day  and  backing  out  of  it  the  next,  seeking  fresh 
principles  of  action  with  every  fresh  mail  from 
America,"  as  Edmund  Burke  tauntingly  put  it,  had 
repealed  the  Townshend  duties,  leaving  only  the 
trifling  tax  of  threepence  a  pound  on  tea  to  maintain 
the  principle  of  Parliament's  right  to  tax  the  colo 
nies'  trade.  In  1773  the  British  East  India  Com 
pany,  in  financial  straits,  and  with  a  glut  of  millions 
of  pounds  of  unsold  tea  in  its  English  warehouses, 
applied  to  the  government  for  relief.  Here  was  a 
rare  opportunity  for  George  III  to  accomplish  two 
desirable  objects  by  a  single  stroke.  By  remitting 
the  shilling  duty  payable  in  England  he  could  allow 
the  East  India  corporation  to  dispose  of  its  tea  in 
America  at  a  lower  price,  even  including  the  three 
penny  tax,  than  the  colonists  had  to  pay  for  their 
smuggled  cargoes  from  European  ports;  and  at  the 
same  time  he  could  tempt  the  Americans  to  take 
the  tea  at  the  good  bargain  offered  and,  by  paying 
the  duty,  indorse  the  principle,  so  dear  to  his  heart, 
of  Parliament's  right  to  tax  them.1 

1  Figures  from  the  office  of  the  inspector  of  imports  and  exports 
show  that  the  importation  of  tea  from  English  ports  into  the  Ameri- 


EQUIPMENT  AND  APPRENTICESHIP    19 

So  the  late  autumn  of  1773  saw  several  ship-loads 
of  the  East  India  Company's  tea  on  the  way  to 
American  ports.  But  the  clever  trick  did  not  work. 
The  people  of  Charleston  got  the  consignees  of  the 
cargo  destined  for  that  port  to  resign,  and  eventually 
sold  the  tea  at  auction  for  the  benefit  of  the  revo 
lutionary  government.  Public  opinion  in  Philadel 
phia  and  New  York  prevailed  with  the  consignees 
and  customs  officers  to  send  the  tea  ships  back  to 
England  without  unloading.  But  in  Boston,  where 
the  consignees  would  not  resign,  nor  the  customs 
officers  give  clearance  papers  for  a  return  voyage 
without  unloading,  nor  the  governor  sign  a  pass  per 
mitting  the  ships  to  sail  without  clearance  papers, 
there  seemed  but  one  way  left  to  prevent  the  tea 
from  being  landed  and  the  duties  paid.  On  the 
night  of  December  16,  1773,  a  group  of  citizens 
dressed  like  Indians  boarded  the  ships  at  Long 
Wharf,  and  ripping  open  the  chests  with  their  toma 
hawks  dumped  the  tea  into  Boston  harbor. 

The  punishment  which  Parliament  meted  out  for 
this  defiance  of  royal  authority  and  wanton  destruc 
tion  of  property  was  swift  and  sure.  The  whole 

can  colonies  had  fallen  off  from  877,193  pounds,  paying  a  duty  of 
£9,723,  in  1768-9,  to  237,062  pounds,  paying  a  duty  of  only  £1,677, 
in  1772-3.  Yet  no  one  could  believe  that  the  Americans  were  drink 
ing  only  one-quarter  as  much  tea  in  the  latter  as  in  the  former  year. 
The  King  believed,  with  apparent  good  reason,  that  the  virtual 
monopoly  which  he  granted  the  East  India  Company  would  put  an 
end  to  smuggling  and  restore  the  British  tea  trade  to  its  normal 
figures. 


20  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

province  was  chastised  for  the  act  of  a  few  score 
men.  The  charter  was  revised  in  such  a  way  as  to 
throw  almost  despotic  power  into  the  hands  of  the 
royal  governor;  town  meetings,  those  nurseries  of 
independence,  were  forbidden,  except  for  the  annual 
election  of  officers;  public  buildings  were  designated 
as  barracks  for  the  King's  troops;  and  the  port  of 
Boston  was  closed  by  British  war-ships,  except  for 
"fuel  or  victual  ...  for  the  necessary  use  and  sus 
tenance  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  said  town/'  from 
June  1,  1774,  until  the  tea  should  be  paid  for. 

When  the  news  of  the  punishment  of  Boston 
reached  the  Virginia  Burgesses  in  their  spring  ses 
sion  of  1774,  the  same  group  of  "bolder  spirits"  who 
had  taken  the  lead  from  the  older  members  in  1769, 
agreeing  with  Jefferson  that  they  "must  take  an  un 
equivocal  stand  in  the  line  with  Massachusetts," 
voted  a  resolution  to  observe  the  1st  of  June  as  a 
day  of  fasting,  humiliation,  and  prayer,  "to  implore 
heaven  to  avert  from  us  the  evils  of  civil  war,  to  in 
spire  us  with  firmness  in  support  of  our  rights,  and 
to  turn  the  hearts  of  the  King  and  Parliament  to 
moderation  and  justice."  The  reply  to  such  inso 
lence  could  not  be  in  doubt.  "The  governor  dis 
solved  us  as  usual,"  is  Jefferson's  laconic  comment. 
And,  as  usual,  again  the  members  "retired  to  the 
Apollo,"  where  they  adopted  resolutions  boycotting 
British  goods,  declaring  that  an  attack  on  one  colony 
was  an  attack  on  all,  and  instructing  their  committee 


EQUIPMENT  AND  APPRENTICESHIP    21 

of  correspondence  to  sound  the  other  colonies  on  the 
advisability  of  general  annual  congresses,  the  first 
to  be  held  at  Philadelphia  in  the  following  Septem 
ber.  They  further  agreed  that  a  convention  should 
meet  at  Williamsburg  on  August  1  to  appoint  dele 
gates  to  the  Philadelphia  Congress  if  the  colonies  re 
ported  favorably  on  the  plan. 

Albemarle  County  designated  its  newly  elected 
burgesses,  Jefferson  and  Walker,  as  delegates  to  the 
convention  at  Williamsburg.  Their  instructions, 
drawn  up  by  Jefferson  himself,  contained  resolutions 
asserting  that  the  natural  and  legal  rights  of  the 
colonists  had  been  invaded  by  Parliament  in  fre 
quent  instances,  and  pledging  the  co-operation  of  the 
Virginians  "with  their  fellow-subjects  in  every  part 
of  the  Empire  for  the  reestablishment  and  guaran 
teeing  such  their  constitutional  rights,  when,  where, 
and  by  whomsoever  invaded."  These  instructions, 
more  radical  than  those  of  any  other  county,1  more 
defiant  even  than  the  Stamp  Act  resolutions  of  Pat 
rick  Henry,  were  only  the  text  of  a  most  remarkable 

1  The  resolutions  of  the  Fairfax  County  meeting,  for  example,  over 
which  George  Washington  presided,  acknowledged  Parliament's 
power,  "directed  with  wisdom  and  moderation,"  to  regulate  Ameri 
can  trade  and  commerce.  All  the  Virginia  patriots,  except  George 
Wythe,  says  Jefferson  in  his  Memoir,  "stopped  at  the  half-way  house 
of  John  Dickinson,  who  admitted  that  England  had  a  right  to  regu 
late  our  commerce,  and  to  lay  duties  on  it  for  the  purpose  of  regula 
tion,  but  not  of  raising  revenue."  Jefferson  took  the  ground  from 
the  beginning  that  our  connection  with  England  was  simply  the  per 
sonal  union  of  the  American  and  British  parts  of  the  Empire  under 
the  same  sovereign. 


22  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

document  which  Jefferson  prepared  in  the  summer 
of  1774,  to  serve  as  instructions  for  the  delegates 
from  Virginia  to  the  general  Continental  Congress 
at  Philadelphia. 

Jefferson  was  taken  ill  on  the  way  to  Williams- 
burg  and  obliged  to  return  to  Monticello.  But  he 
sent  on  two  copies  of  his  paper,  one  to  Patrick  Henry, 
the  other  to  Peyton  Randolph,  who  he  was  sure 
would  be  chosen  chairman  of  the  convention.  Ran 
dolph  placed  his  copy  on  the  table  for  the  members' 
perusal.  They  thought  it  "too  bold  for  the  present 
state  of  things,"  and  in  its  place  drew  up  a  briefer 
and  milder  set  of  instructions,  in  which  they  de 
clared  their  "faith  and  true  allegiance  to  His  Maj 
esty,  King  George  the  Third,  our  lawful  and  rightful 
sovereign,"  and  their  ardent  wish  for  the  return  of 
the  affection  and  commercial  ties  which  formerly 
united  both  countries;  protesting  only  against  some 
specific  abuses  (notably  Governor  Gage's  conduct  in 
Massachusetts),  without  whose  redress  America 
could  "neither  be  safe  nor  free  nor  happy." 

The  paper  which  Jefferson's  colleagues  generally 
thought  "too  bold  for  the  present  state  of  things," 
was  nevertheless  printed  by  some  of  the  author's 
friends  under  the  title,  A  Summary  View  of  the 
Rights  of  British  America.  This  celebrated  pam 
phlet  opens  the  list  of  American  polemic  and  apolo 
getic  papers  on  the  Revolution  which  Englishmen 
like  Burke,  Pitt,  and  Conway  declared  were  unsur- 


EQUIPMENT  AND  APPRENTICESHIP    23 

passed  in  the  literature  of  political  argumentation. 
It  was  the  boldest  declaration  of  American  rights — 
almost  a  declaration  of  independence.  It  denied 
in  toto  the  supremacy  of  Parliament  over  the  colo 
nies,  asking  by  what  right  one  hundred  and  sixty 
thousand  electors  in  the  island  of  Great  Britain  pre 
tended  to  give  laws  to  four  million  in  the  states 
(note  the  word !)  of  America.  When  the  colonists 
left  England,  Jefferson  maintained,  they  carried 
their  liberties  with  them  and  escaped  the  control  of 
their  fellow  Britons  left  behind  as  completely  as 
their  common  ancestors  who  came  over  from  Saxony 
escaped  the  rule  of  their  German  kinsfolk.  E very- 
act  of  Parliament  touching  the  manufactures  and 
trade  of  the  Americans  had  been  a  usurpation  and 
a  wanton  assault  "upon  the  rights  which  God  and 
the  laws  have  given  equally  and  independently  to 
us  all."  The  rapid  succession  of  such  acts  during 
the  reign  of  George  III  "pursued  unalterably  through 
every  change  of  ministers,  too  plainly  prove  a  de 
liberate  and  systematical  plan  of  reducing  us  to 
slavery." 

Jefferson  reviews  these  acts:  the  revenue  mea 
sures,  the  suspension  of  colonial  legislatures,  the 
punishment  of  Boston.  He  examines  the  conduct 
of  George  III :  the  vetoes  on  colonial  laws,  the  arbi 
trary  instructions  to  colonial  governors,  the  exercise 
of  feudal  privileges  over  the  soil,  the  landing  of 
troops  on  our  shores,  the  subordination  of  the  civil 


24  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

to  the  military  power.  He  entreats  the  King,  as 
"the  only  mediatory  power  between  the  several 
states  of  the  British  Empire,"  to  recommend  to  Par 
liament  the  total  revocation  of  its  offensive  acts, 
and  himself  to  cease  to  sacrifice  the  rights  of  one 
part  of  the  empire  to  the  inordinate  desires  of  an 
other.  The  language  of  the  address  from  beginning 
to  end  is  that  of  freemen  claiming  their  rights,  not 
suppliants  asking  a  boon.  The  customary  bending 
/  of  the  knee  and  lavishing  of  obsequious  adjectives 
are  wanting.  Instead,  there  is  protest,  remon 
strance,  defiance,  warning,  and  even  exhortation. 
The  young  lawyer  of  Albemarle  County  dares  to 
sermonize  the  ruler  of  the  British  Empire:  "Open 
your  breast,  sire,  to  liberal  and  expanded  thought. 
Let  not  the  name  of  George  the  Third  be  a  blot  on 
the  page  of  history.  The  whole  art  of  government 
consists  in  the  art  of  being  honest.  Only  aim  to  do 
your  duty,  and  mankind  will  give  you  credit  where 
you  fail."  Intolerable  insolence !  / 

With  the  publication  of  the  Summary  View  in 
1774,  as  the  delegates  of  the  colonies  were  gathering 
in  Philadelphia,  the  period  of  Jefferson's  apprentice 
ship  comes  to  a  close.  The  crisis  in  his  country's 
life  was  a  milestone  in  his  own.  He  had  reached 
his  political  majority.  Up  to  now  he  had  served  on 
committees,  drawn  up  resolutions,  signed  remon 
strances  with  his  colleagues  at  the  Raleigh  Tavern, 
returning  to  his  law  practice  or  to  his  farms  at  Mon- 


EQUIPMENT  AND  APPRENTICESHIP    25 

ticello.  But  from  now  on  he  became  altogether  a 
public  servant.  His  law  office  was  closed  and  the 
good-will  and  the  clients  turned  over  to  his  distant 
cousin,  Edmund  Randolph.  And  though  he  was  to 
protest  till  the  day  of  his  release  from  the  presi 
dency,  thirty-five  years  later,  that  he  would  have 
laid  down  high  office  any  moment  for  the  joy  of 
returning  to  his  estate,  the  call  of  his  country  and 
the  response  of  his  own  lofty  sense  of  responsibility 
to  his  country's  service  kept  him  almost  a  stranger 
to  Monticello  until  he  returned  at  last,  ripe  with  age 
and  honors,  to  spend  his  declining  years  amid  the 
dream  scenes  of  his  youth. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE 

By  the  God  that  made  me,  I  will  cease  to  exist  before  I  yield  to  a  con 
nection  on  such  terms  as  the  British  Parliament  propose.  (Jefferson 
to  John  Randolph,  November  29,  1775.) 

WHEN  unauthorized  bodies  meet  to  review  and  re 
dress  the  policies  of  absolute  kings,  revolution  has 
begun:  witness  the  Convention  Parliament  and  the 
Tennis  Court  Oath.  Such  a  body  were  the  sixty 
delegates  of  what  Jefferson  called  "the  American 
States  of  the  British  Empire/ '  who  met  on  Septem 
ber  5,  1774,  in  the  Carpenters'  Hall  of  Philadelphia. 
"Certain  persons,"  the  lord  governor  of  Virginia 
called  them,  "who  have  presumed  without  his 
Majesty's  authority  or  consent  to  assemble  to 
gether."  Their  arrival  was  scarcely  noticed  by  the 
Philadelphia  newspapers,  their  session  lasted  only 
fifty-two  days,  and  their  measures  were  mild — for 
the  majority  of  the  delegates  were  still  conservative. 
They  sent  a  respectful  petition  to  the  King  for  a 
redress  of  grievances,  not  differing  much  in  tone 
from  that  sent  by  the  Stamp  Act  Congress  nine 
years  earlier,  and  adopted  an  "association"  or  non 
importation  agreement  to  be  binding  on  all  the  colo 
nies.  Their  significance  was  rather  in  the  meeting 

26 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE    27 

itself  than  in  its  resolutions.  They  were  for  the 
first  time  expressing  the  will  of  the  united  colonies. 
Jefferson  was  not  a  member  of  the  first  Conti 
nental  Congress,  but  he  came  to  the  forefront  in  the 
revolutionary  politics  of  Virginia.  On  New  Year's 
day,  1775,  he  was  elected  chairman  of  the  Commit 
tee  of  Public  Safety  of  Albemarle  County,1  and  the 
following  March  was  sent  as  delegate  to  the  second 
Virginia  convention,  which  met,  not  at  Williams- 
burg,  within  reach  of  the  King's  war-ships,  but  at  the 
little  village  of  Richmond  up  the  river.  Here  again 
the  irresistible  torrent  of  Patrick  Henry's  eloquence 
swept  the  assembly  on  to  revolution.  "We  must 
fight !"  he  cried.  "The  next  gale  that  sweeps  from 
the  North  will  bring  to  our  ears  the  clash  of  resound 
ing  arms.  Our  brethren  are  already  in  the  field. 
Why  stand  we  here  idle  ?  Is  life  so  dear  or  peace  so 
sweet  as  to  be  purchased  at  the  price  of  chains  and 
slavery  ?  Forbid  it,  Almighty  God !  I  know  not 
what  course  others  may  take;  but  as  for  me,  give  me 
liberty  or  give  me  death !"  The  motion  to  arm  the 
colony  was  carried,  and  Jefferson  was  placed,  with 
Henry,  Lee,  Washington,  and  nine  others,  on  a  com 
mittee  to  prepare  a  plan  of  defense.  Before  ad- 

1  "  The  powers  of  these  committees  were  almost  unlimited.  They 
inspected  the  books  of  merchants  to  see  if  they  imported  prohibited 
articles,  or  sold  at  exorbitant  prices.  They  examined  all  suspected 
persons,  disarmed,  fined,  or  imprisoned  them,  and  from  their  deci 
sions  there  was  no  appeal.  They  even  enlisted,  trained,  armed,  and 
officered  independent  companies  and  minute-men  in  each  county/' 
says  Girardin  in  his  History  of  Virginia. 


28  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

journing,  the  convention  re-elected  its  seven  dele 
gates  of  1774  to  the  new  session  of  the  Continental 
Congress,  to  be  held  in  Philadelphia  on  May  10, 
adding  the  name  of  Thomas  Jefferson  to  replace 
Peyton  Randolph,  in  case  the  latter  should  be  re 
called  to  preside  over  the  Virginia  House  of  Bur 
gesses. 

Soon  after  the  opening  of  the  Congress,  the  King's 
governors  in  America  received  a  conciliatory  pro 
posal  from  Lord  North,  to  the  effect  that  any  colony 
agreeing  to  raise  the  sum  assessed  by  Parliament 
and  to  leave  the  spending  of  the  money  to  royal 
authority,  should  be  free  to  levy  the  tax  in  its  own 
way.  Much  as  he  hated  and  feared  to  call  together 
the  House  of  Burgesses,  which  he  had  twice  sum 
marily  dissolved,  and  some  of  whose  members  (Ran 
dolph,  Henry,  Jefferson)  he  was  even  thinking  of 
prosecuting  for  treason,  Governor  Dunmore  was  per 
suaded  by  his  Council  that  there  wa*s  no  other  way 
of  getting  Lord  North's  proposal  before  the  colony 
or  of  preserving  his  own  remnant  of  authority.  Ac 
cordingly,  the  burgesses  were  convened  the  1st  of 
June,  1775,  some  of  them  coming  down  from  the 
upper  counties  in  hunting-shirts  with  their  rifles 
slung  across  their  shoulders.  Governor  Dunmore 
did  not  wait  to  hear  their  answer  to  Lord  North's 
proposals.  The  wounding  of  two  young  men  who 
had  entered  the  magazine  to  secure  arms,  by  spring- 
guns  trained  on  the  doors,  raised  such  a  storm 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE     29 

against  the  "murderous  governor"  in  Williamsburg 
that  Lord  Dunmore  thought  it  wise  to  slip  away 
from  his  capital  and  take  refuge  on  the  deck  of  the 
war-ship  (June  8).  It  was  the  end  of  the  rule  of 
George  Ill's  servants  in  Virginia. 

The  summons  of  the  House  of  Burgesses  recalled 
Peyton  Randolph  from  the  Congress  at  Philadelphia, 
leaving  the  vacancy  which  Jefferson  had  been  chosen 
to  fill.  Randolph  asked  Jefferson  to  remain  at  Wil 
liamsburg,  however,  long  enough  to  prepare  the 
answer  of  the  burgesses  to  Lord  North.  The  paper 
which  Jefferson  drew  up,  and  which  was  adopted  on 
June  10,  was  a  respectful  but  firm  rejection  of  the 
terms  offered.  They  only  "  changed  the  form  of 
oppression  without  lightening  its  burdens."  The 
colony  could  not  agree  to  saddle  itself  with  a  per 
petual  tax,  whose  amount  was  to  be  determined  by 
the  British  Parliament.  Besides,  Lord  North  left 
all  the  other  grievances  of  the  colonies  unredressed: 
the  laws  against  their  trade,  the  interference  with 
their  legislatures,  the  reconstruction  of  their  courts, 
the  suppression  of  trial  by  jury,  the  introduction  of 
standing  armies.  Finally,  it  was  too  late  to  appeal 
to  the  separate  colonies  with  offers  of  conciliation. 
Virginia  was  committed  to  the  common  cause,  and 
her  delegates  were  sitting  in  the  general  Congress, 
before  which  his  lordship's  papers  should  be  laid 
for  common  deliberation.  "We  consider  ourselves 
as  bound  in  honor,  as  well  as  interest,  to  share  one 


30  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

general  fate  with  our  sister  colonies,  and  should  hold 
ourselves  base  deserters  of  that  union  to  which  we 
have  acceded,  were  we  to  agree  on  any  measures 
distinct  and  separate  from  them."  In  other  words, 
it  was  to  Philadelphia  and  not  to  Westminster  that 
the  Americans  now  looked  for  their  authority. 

The  day  after  his  reply  to  Lord  North  was  ac 
cepted  by  the  burgesses,  Jefferson  set  out  by  car 
riage  for  Philadelphia,  taking  a  copy  of  the  reply  in 
his  pocket.1  He  could  make  only  about  twenty 
miles  a  day  over  the  poor  roads  and  across  the  slow 
ferries.  There  were  eight  unbridged  rivers  to  cross 
in  his  journey  of  two  hundred  and  fifty  miles.  He 
arrived  on  June  20,  just  in  time  to  see  George  Wash 
ington  set  out  for  Cambridge  to  take  command  of 
the  American  army  of  sixteen  thousand  New  Eng 
land  farmers.  Although  he  was  but  thirty-two  years 
of  age — the  youngest  man  in  Congress,  with  the  ex 
ception  of  Edward  Rutledge  of  South  Carolina,  and 
John  Jay  of  New  York — Jefferson  was  already 
known  to  the  leading  men  of  Philadelphia.  "He 
brought  with  him,"  wrote  John  Adams,  "a  reputa 
tion  for  literary  science  and  a  happy  talent  of  com 
position.  Writings  of  his  [the  Summary  View  and 
the  Reply  to  Lord  North]  were  handed  about,  re- 

1  Jefferson  says  in  his  Memoir  that  he  "conveyed  to  Congress  the 
first  notice  they  had  of  it."  But  here,  as  in  many  minor  points  in 
the  Memoir,  memory  played  the  old  man  of  seventy-seven  false. 
New  Jersey  had  laid  the  proposal  of  North  before  the  Congress  on 
May  20. 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE    31 

markable  for  their  peculiar  felicity  of  expression." 
Jefferson  had  no  talent  for  public  debate,  but  in 
consultation  and  committee  work  his  opinion  was 
" prompt,  frank,  explicit,  and  decisive,"  says  John 
Adams  in  the  same  letter.  He  was  a  welcome  ac 
cession  to  the  radical  cause  in  Congress,  especially 
as  he  had  the  learning  and  the  art  to  write  a  power 
ful  apology  for  that  cause.  Our  affairs  were,  as  the 
writers  of  the  time  phrased  it,  "in  a  delicate  pos 
ture."  War  had  actually  begun,  yet  we  were  still 
protesting  our  loyalty  and  sending  our  petitions  to 
George  III;  united  action  was  the  only  hope  for  our 
cause,  and  yet  further  measures  of  violence  might 
drive  the  hesitating  into  the  arms  of  England;  and 
in  England  itself  we  had  to  convince  the  Tories 
of  our  candor  and  the  Whigs  of  our  courage. 

It  was  not  long  before  the  masterly  pen  of  Jeffer 
son  was  called  into  requisition.  News  of  the  ter 
rible  slaughter  of  Bunker  Hill  reached  Congress. 
Lexington  and  Concord  might  be  explained  away  as 
skirmishes,  but  here  was  war  in  grim  array,  serried 
ranks  of  redcoats  marching  up  the  hill  again  and 
again  to  silence  the  murderous  fire  from  the  Ameri 
can  ramparts.  Congress  hastened  to  appoint  a 
committee  to  explain  and  justify  the  colonists7  resort 
to  arms,  in  a  "declaration  to  be  published  by  Gen 
eral  Washington  upon  his  arrival  at  the  camp  before 
Boston. "  John  Rutledge's  report  was  unsatisfactory 
to  Congress,  and  John  Dickinson  and  Thomas  Jef- 


32  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

ferson  were  added  to  the  committee.  "I  prepared 
a  draft/'  says  Jefferson  in  his  Memoir,  "of  the  Dec 
laration  committed  to  us.  It  was  too  strong  for 
Mr.  Dickinson.  .  .  .  We  therefore  requested  him 
to  take  the  paper  and  put  it  into  a  form  that  he 
could  approve.  He  did  so,  preparing  an  entire  new 
statement,  and  preserving  of  the  former  only  the 
last  four  paragraphs  and  half  the  preceding  one. 
We  approved  and  reported  it  to  Congress,  who 
accepted  it." 

Now  the  last  four  and  a  half  paragraphs  of  this 
famous  Declaration  on  the  Colonists  Taking  up  Arms 
are  worth  all  the  rest  of  the  paper.  They  are  ner 
vous,  forceful,  and  thoroughly  radical.  It  is  from 
them  that  the  epigrammatic  phrases  are  often 
quoted:  "Our  cause  is  just,  our  union  is  perfect/' 
"resolved  rather  to  die  free  than  live  slaves/'  "we 
fight  not  for  glory  or  conquest/'  "against  violence 
actually  offered  we  have  taken  up  arms,  we  shall 
lay  them  down  when  hostilities  cease  on  the  part  of 
the  aggressor."  It  was  these  sentiments  that  were 
received  with  "thundering  huzzas"  by  the  soldiers 
encamped  around  Boston.  They  ar£  sentiments  we 
should  expect  from  Jefferson,  but  not  at  all  from 
the  conservative  John  Dickinson.  Yet,  in  spite  of 
their  Jeffersonian  style,  our  documentary  evidence 
seems  to  prove  that  they  were  written  by  Dickinson. 
The  manuscript  of  Jefferson's  rejected  draft  of  the 
Declaration  is  among  the  original  Jefferson  papers  in 


I 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE    33 

the  Department  of  State  at  Washington.  In  1882 
Doctor  George  H.  Moore,  of  the  New  York  Histori 
cal  Society,  found  among  its  papers  a  draft  of  the 
entire  Declaration,  with  corrections  and  interlinings, 
in  the  handwriting  of  John  Dickinson.  A  compari 
son  of  these  two  documents  shows  that  Dickinson 
embodied  several  of  Jefferson's  ideas  and  even  kept 
some  of  his  phrases  (as  he  would  naturally  do,  being 
asked  to  " amend"  Jefferson's  draft).  But  there  is 
no  more,  or  very  little  more,  of  Jefferson's  draft  in 
the  last  four  and  a  half  paragraphs  than  in  the  rest 
of  the  paper.  We  are  at  a  loss  to  explain  Jefferson's 
explicit  statement  in  the  Memoir.1 

On  the  day  before  Congress  adjourned  (July  31, 
1775)  it  adopted  a  reply  to  Lord  North's  conciliatory 
resolution.  Jefferson,  having  written  the  reply  of 
the  Virginia  Burgesses,  which  was  approved  by 
Congress,  was  asked  to  draft  the  paper.  It  em- 

1  Still  we  object  to  the  tone  of  censorious  hostility  to  Jefferson  in 
the  address  of  Doctor  Moore,  as  printed  in  Stille's  Life  and  Times 
of  John  Dickinson:  "If  any  man  can  discover  any  good,  honest 
reason  why  Mr.  Jefferson  wrote  such  a  story  [of  the  last  four  and 
a  half  paragraphs]  in  his  Autobiography,  he  will  render  a  seasonable 
and  important  service  to  the  much  exalted  reputation  of  the  author." 
(P.  361.)  The  innuendo  and  the  sneer  are  both  undeserved.  No 
one  believes  that  Thomas  Jefferson  deliberately  lied.  There  may 
have  been  consultations  and  tentative  drafts  in  which  both  Jefferson 
and  Dickinson  had  a  part,  leaving  on  the  former  the  distinct  impres 
sion  that  the  closing  paragraphs  were  his  suggestion  primarily.  At 
any  rate,  Doctor  Moore  goes  beyond  the  warrant  of  the  evidence 
when  he  asserts  in  italics  that  the  draft  in  Dickinson's  handwriting 
"  proves  that  the  author  of  any  part  was  the  author  of  every  part,  and  that 
there  was  but  one  hand  in  the  work,  and  that  the  hand  of  John  Dickin 
son."  It  proves  no  such  thing,  as  every  historical  student  knows. 


34  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

bodied,  "in  statelier  form,"  the  resolutions  of  the 
Virginia  House  which  we  have  already  analyzed. 
On  the  adjournment  of  Congress  till  the  fifth  of  the 
following  September,  Jefferson  returned  with  Henry, 
Harrison,  and  Lee  to  the  Virginia  Convention  at 
Richmond.  He  remained  here  only  ten  days,  but 
before  he  returned  to  Monticello  he  had  the  satis 
faction  of  being  re-elected  to  Congress  by  a  very 
large  majority,  and  of  seeing  the  first  breach  made 
in  the  exclusive  privilege  of  the  Anglican  establish 
ment  in  Virginia.  Baptist  and  Congregationalist 
patriots,  with  the  reverend  John  Clay,  father  of  the 
great  Henry,  among  their  leaders,  secured  the  pas 
sage  of  a  resolution  by  the  convention  allowing  the 
dissenting  ministers  to  preach  in  camp,  "for  the 
ease  of  such  consciences  as  may  not  chuse  to  attend 
divine  service  as  celebrated  by  the  chaplain."  We 
shall  see  in  later  pages  with  what  zeal  Jefferson 
threw  himself  into  the  struggle  for  complete  religious 
freedom  in  Virginia. 

While  Peyton  Randolph  was  being  returned  to 
Congress  at  the  head  of  the  poll,  his  brother  John 
was  making  his  preparations  to  emigrate  to  E'ngland, 
for  he  adhered  to  the  royal  cause.  Jefferson  wrote 
him  a  letter  from  Monticello  in  August,  1775,  beg 
ging  him  to  make  the  true  sentiments  of  the  Ameri 
cans  understood  in  England.  It  is  one  of  the  most 
valuable  letters  we  have  from  Jefferson's  pen,  de 
scribing  both  his  own  and  his  countrymen's  feelings 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE    35 

at  a  most  critical  moment  in  our  history.  He  voices 
the  hope  that  "the  returning  wisdom  of  Great  Brit 
ain  will  ere  long  put  an  end  to  this  unnatural  con 
test."  He  professes  the  sincere  preference  "to  be 
in  dependence  on  Great  Britain,  properly  limited, 
than  on  any  other  nation  upon  earth  or  than  on  no 
nation."  He  fears  that  the  King's  ministers  have 
been  deceived  by  their  officials  on  this  side  of  the 
water,  who  represent  the  American  opposition  as  a 
small  faction,  and  as  cowards  who  will  surrender  at 
discretion  to  a  small  force.  He  insists  that  the 
Americans  are  in  earnest,  and  that  "no  partial  con 
cessions  of  right  will  be  accepted."  He  warns  the 
men  who  are  directing  the  policy  of  the  British  Em 
pire  that  it  is  "the  most  critical  time  certainly  that 
it  has  ever  seen,"  a  crisis  which  will  determine 
"whether  Britain  shall  continue  the  head  of  the 
greatest  empire  on  earth,  or  shall  return  to  her  origi 
nal  station  in  the  political  scale  of  Europe."  And 
he  adjures  the  ministry  not  "to  trifle  with  accom 
modation  till  it  shall  be  out  of  their  power  forever 
to  accommodate."  There  is  little  probability  that 
John  Randolph  urged  these  "instructions"  on  the 
British  ministry,  but  the  writing  of  them  in  the 
quiet  of  Monticello,  after  the  stirring  scenes  of  the 
summer,  must  have  been  a  kind  of  mental  stock 
taking  for  Jefferson,  still  further  clarifying  his  ideas 
and  fortifying  his  convictions  on  the  rights  of 
"British  America." 


36  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

Jefferson  returned  to  Congress  late  in  September 
with  a  heavy  heart.  His  second  child,  Jane,  had 
just  died  at  the  age  of  eighteen  months,  his  mother 
was  failing  fast,  and  his  wife's  health  was  very  poor. 
He  was  sorely  needed  at  Monticello  for  comfort, 
protection,  and  support.  Lord  Dunmore  was  en 
gaged  in  the  dastardly  policy  of  revenge  by  inciting 
the  slaves  to  revolt  and  offering  them  arms.  Al 
though  the  merest  handful  replied  to  his  solicitation, 
the  anxiety  on  the  farms  and  plantations  of  Virginia 
was  great;  for  the  slightest  rumor  of  a  slave  insur 
rection  always  caused  a  panic  in  the  Old  Dominion. 
Jefferson  had  over  eighty  slaves  at  Monticello,  and 
a  "family"  of  thirty-four  whites.  There  was  no 
man  capable  of  caring  properly  for  the  estate 
but  himself.  His  letters  from  Philadelphia  to  his 
brother-in-law,  Francis  Eppes,  betray  his  anxiety. 
On  November  7  he  writes  that  he  has  not  heard  a 
word  from  any  mortal  in  Virginia  during  the  seven 
weeks  since  he  left  home:  "The  suspense  under 
which  I  am  is  too  terrible  to  be  endured;  if  any 
thing  has  happened,  for  God's  sake  let  me  know  it." 
Finally,  toward  the  close  of  December,  he  left  Phila 
delphia,  the  rules  requiring  only  that  a  majority  of 
the  delegation  from  the  State  be  present  at  Con 
gress.  The  next  four  and  a  half  months  he  spent  at 
Monticello. 

The  irony  of  our  protestations  of  allegiance  to 
Great  Britain  and  the  futility  of  any  hopes  for  a 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE    37 

reconciliation  with  Parliament  were  becoming  more 
patent  with  every  month  that  passed.  The  King 
refused  to  receive  the  "olive  branch  petition"  which 
Dickinson,  Jay,  and  Wilson  had  persuaded  Congress 
to  send  in  July,  1775,  as  a  last  appeal  to  "his  most 
gracious  Majesty."  Instead,  he  had  declared  the 
American  colonies  to  be  in  a  state  of  rebellion  and 
sedition.1  He  prohibited  all  trade  and  intercourse 
with  them,  bombarded  and  burned  their  towns 
(Falmouth  and  Norfolk),  and  hired  German  mer 
cenaries  to  reduce  them  to  obedience.  In  Novem 
ber,  1775,  Parliament,  by  a  vote  of  83  to  33  in  the 
Lords  and  210  to  105  in  the  Commons,  rejected  mo 
tions  for  conciliation.  On  this  side  of  the  water 
there  was  no  less  determination.  Congress  main 
tained  an  army  in  active  opposition  to  the  royal 
governor  of  Massachusetts,  made  war  contracts, 
granted  military  commissions,  appointed  a  diplo 
matic  committee  to  sound  the  courts  of  Europe  for 
aid,  and  recommended  to  the  patriots  of  New  Hamp 
shire,  South  Carolina,  and  Virginia  to  follow  the 
lead  of  Massachusetts  in  establishing  such  forms  of 

1  When  Benjamin  Franklin  returned  to  America  in  March,  1775, 
after  ten  years'  official  residence  in  London  as  "agent"  of  several 
colonies,  he  told  the  Americans  how  their  petitions  to  the  King  were 
treated:  "Transmitted  to  Parliament  with  a  great  heap  of  letters, 
newspapers,  handbills,  etc.,  and  laid  on  the  table  undistinguished 
by  any  recommendation  and  unnoticed  in  the  royal  speech."  In 
spite  of  Franklin's  report,  Congress  addressed  the  throne  in  most 
obsequious  language  in  its  petition  of  July  8,  1775,  two  days  after 
the  Declaration  on  the  Colonists  Taking  up  Arms.  John  Dickinson 
was  the  author  of  both  papers ! 


38  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

government  as,  in  their  judgment,  would  "best  pro 
duce  the  happiness  of  the  people  and  most  effectually 
secure  peace  and  good  order  during  the  continuance 
of  the  present  dispute  between  Great  Britain  and  the 
colonies."  It  is  difficult  to.see  what  further  act  of 
sovereignty  the  colonists  could  perform.  The  in 
consistency"  of  such  behavior  with  professions  of 
loyalty  to  the  crown  was  convincingly  shown  by 
Thomas  Paine  in  his  famous  pamphlet,  Common 
Sense  (January,  1776),  which  urged  the  colonies  to 
drop  their  sentimental  attachment  to  a  stupid  King 
and  a  servile  Parliament,  and  to  wake  to  their  pro 
phetic  mission  as  founders  of  a  new  nation  destined 
to  be  vast  and  populous,  an  example  of  freedom 
and  democracy  to  the  whole  world. 

Thomas  Paine's  pamphlet  was  running  into  the 
tens  of  thousands,  its  "sound  doctrine  and  unan 
swerable  reasoning"  (the  words  are  Washington's), 
stirring  a  new  spirit  of  independence  throughout  the 
land,  when  Thomas  Jefferson  went  up  in  May,  1776, 
to  "resume  his  seat  in  Congress.  Already  the  ties 
which  bound  the  colonies  to  England  were  snapping. 
The  local  committees  of  safety  had  virtually  suc 
ceeded  the  King's  officials  in  New  England  and  the 
colonies  south  of  the  Potomac.  Only  the  middle 
group — New  York,  Pennsylvania,  New  Jersey,  and 
Maryland — held  firm  in  their  allegiance,  instructing 
their  delegates  in  Congress  as  late  as  January,  1776, 
to  resist  any  proposition  for  a  separation  from 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE    39 

Great  Britain.  On  April  12  the  convention  of 
North  Carolina  authorized  its  delegates  "to  concur 
with  the  delegates  of  other  colonies  in  declaring  in 
dependency";  and  a  month  later  the  Virginia  Con 
vention  took  the  decisive  step  of  instructing  its  dele 
gates  in  Congress  "to  propose  to  that  respectable 
body  to  declare  the  united  colonies  free  and  inde 
pendent  States,  absolved  from  all  allegiance  to  or 
dependence  upon  the  Crown  or  Parliament  of  Great 
Britain."  Mr.  H.  S.  Randall,  in  his  elaborate  biog 
raphy  of  Jefferson,  thinks  it  likely  that  this  momen 
tous  resolution  of  the  convention  of  Virginia  was 
connected  with  Jefferson's  vacation  from  Congress, 
and  he  urges,  among  other  reasons  for  his  belief, 
that  Jefferson's  election  to  the  first  place  on  the 
committee  chosen  June  10  to  draft  a  declaration  of 
independence  would  scarcely  be  the  reward  be 
stowed  on  a  prodigal  returning  after  four  and  a  half 
months  of  inglorious  ease.  At  any  rate,  it  is  a 
pleasing  surmise  that  the  man  who  wrote  the  im 
mortal  document  was  influential  in  securing  the  in 
troduction  of  the  motion  for  independence,  and 
there  may  have  been  more  than  a  mere  coincidence 
in  the  fact  that  appearance  of  the  resolution  in  the 
Virginia  Convention  followed  so  hard  upon  the  de 
parture  of  Jefferson  for  Philadelphia.1 

1  Mr.  Randall  might  have  added  another  weight  to  his  scale  of 
probabilities  by  quoting  some  of  the  abundant  testimony  of  con 
temporary  Virginians  to  the  part  played  by  the  piedmont  counties 
(where,  of  course,  Jefferson  was  most  influential)  in  the  campaign 


40  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

Richard  Henry  Lee,  in  behalf  of  the  Virginia  del 
egation,  introduced  the  triple  motion  into  Congress, 
June  7,  1776,  declaring  our  independence,  recom 
mending  the  solicitation  of  aid  from  foreign  Powers, 
and  urging  the  formation  of  a  confederation  to 
bind  the  colonies  more  closely  together.  The  first 
clause  was  debated  fiercely.  "The  Congress  sat 
till  seven  o'clock  this  evening/'  wrote  Rutledge  to 
Jay,  "in  consequence  of  a  motion  of  R.  H.  Lee's  ren 
dering  ourselves  free  and  independent  States:  the 
sensible  part  of  the  House  opposed  the  Motion  .  .  . 
I  wish  you  had  been  here.  The  whole  argument 
was  sustained  on  the  one  side  by  R.  Livingston, 
Wilson,  Dickinson,  and  myself,  and  by  the  Power 
of  all  New  England,  Virginia  and  Georgia  at  the 
other."  Jefferson  produces  a  score  or  more  of  argu 
ments  on  each  side  in  brief  synoptic  paragraphs  in 
his  Memoir,  and  adds  that  since  "the  colonies  of 
New  York,  New  Jersey,  Pennsylvania,  Delaware, 
Maryland,  and  South  Carolina  were  not  yet  ma 
tured  for  falling  off  from  the  parent  stem,  but  were 
fast  advancing  to  that  state,  it  was  thought  most 
prudent  to  wait  a  while  for  them  and  to  postpone 
the  decision."  At  the  same  time  a  committee  of 

for  independence.  Mason  wrote  to  R.  H.  Lee  that  the  resolution  of 
May  15  in  the  convention  "was  carried  by  the  western  vote,"  i.  e., 
by  the  members  living  north  and  west  of  Richmond;  and  Jefferson 
himself  wrote  from  Philadelphia  to  Thomas  Nelson,  just  after  taking 
his  seat:  "When  at  home  I  took  great  pains  to  inquire  into  the  sen 
timents  of  the  people  on  that  head  [independence].  In  the  upper 
counties  I  think  I  may  say  nine  out  of  ten  were  for  it." 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE    41 

five  was  appointed  to  draw  up  a  Declaration  of  In 
dependence  to  be  adopted  in  case  the  motion  should 
pass.  Thomas  Jefferson  was  chosen  first  on  the 
committee,  with  John  Adams,  Benjamin  Franklin, 
Roger  Sherman,  and  Robert  R.  Livingston  following 
in  the  order  named.  In  response  to  the  unanimous 
request  of  his  colleagues,  Jefferson  undertook  to 
draft  the  paper. 

To  analyze  the  Declaration  of  Independence 
would  be  as  gratuitous  a  piece  of  work  as  to  analyze 
the  Ten  Commandments.  It  is  the  Bible  of  Ameri 
can  democracy.  The  equality  of  all  men  in  the  eyes 
of  nature  and  the  law,  the  inalienable  rights  of  all 
to  life,  liberty,  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness,  the  func 
tion  of  government  as  a  guarantee  of  those  rights, 
its  just  powers  derived  from  the  consent  of  the  gov 
erned — these  are  the  political  principles  on  which 
our  republic  is  founded  and  from  which  it  will  draw 
its  inspiration  as  long  as  it  lives.  Without  them  it 
would  not  be  a  republic;  without  them  it  would  not 
be  America. 

Congress  handled  Jefferson's  draft  rather  roughly 
in  its  debate  of  July  2-4,  and  the  author  confesses 
himself  that  he  writhed  a  little  under  the  acrimoni 
ous  criticism  of  some  of  its  parts.  Very  few  addi 
tions  were  made,  and  those  only  of  a  few  words,  but 
some  passages  were  suppressed.  In  the  long  list  of 
indictments  against  the  tyrannical  conduct  of 
George  III,  which  comprise  the  body  of  the  Declara- 


42  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

tion,  Jefferson  had  included  a  rebuke  of  the  King 
for  his  perpetuation  of  the  American  slave-trade. 
The  section  was  stricken  out.  New  England  had 
hundreds  of  vessels  engaged  in  the  traffic,  and  the 
Southern  planters  had  not  kept  pace  with  Jefferson 
in  his  emancipation  sentiments.  Another  paragraph 
suppressed  was  the  severe  arraignment  of  the  Eng 
lish  people  as  "unfeeling  brethefen,"  whose. support 
of  a  tyrannical  government  had  "  given  the  last  stab 
to  agonized  affections  and  forced  us  to  endeavor  to 
forget  our  former  love  for  them.77  The  passage  was 
melodramatic  and  inopportune.  Our  quarrel  was 
with  George  III  and  his  Parliament,  not  with  the 
English  people.  A  comparison  of  Jefferson's  origi 
nal  draft  with  the  Declaration  as  amended  and 
adopted  leaves  no  doubt  that  the  pruning  process, 
however  painful  to  the  sensitive  author,  was  wise 
and  wholesome. 

Jefferson  states  in  that  part  of  his  Memoir  which 
he  claims  was  composed  from  notes  taken  at  the 
time  of  the  events  that  the  Declaration  was  accepted 
by  Congress  on  July  4,  and  "  signed  by  every  member 
present  except  Mr.  Dickinson."  But  in  this,  as  in 
many  of  the  statements  in  the  Memoir,  he  is  mis 
taken — unless  we  take  refuge  with  his  devoted  biog 
rapher,  Mr.  Randall,  in  the  rather  absurd  supposi 
tion  that  in  July  all  the  members  but  one  signed  a 
paper  which  (in  spite  of  its  immense  importance) 
soon  disappeared  from  view,  while  several  weeks 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE    43 

later  considerable  difficulty  was  experienced  in  get 
ting  them  to  sign  the  engrossed  copy  now  preserved 
in  the  Department  of  State  at  Washington.  Be 
sides,  Dickinson  was  not  present  in  Congress  on 
July  4, 1776.  The  wide-spread  tradition  of  the  sign 
ing  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence  on  July  4, 
with  its  attendant  stories  of  Franklin's  and  Harri 
son's  facetiousness,  is  due  to  the  following  curious 
fact.  The  secretary,  Charles  Thompson,  in  making 
up  his  minutes  for  the  session  of  July  4,  left  a  blank 
space  for  the  text  of  the  Declaration.  The  space 
was  filled  later  by  pasting  into  it  a  copy  of  the  Dec 
laration,  to  which  were  appended  the  names  of  the 
signers  as  they  appeared  on  the  engrossed  copy. 
August  2  was  the  date  on  which  most  of  the  mem 
bers  actually  signed.  The  original  Declaration  as 
sent  out  by  Congress  bore  only  the  name  of  the 
president,  John  Hancock,  written  in  the  bold  letters 
"which  George  III  could  read  without  his  specta 
cles,"  and  of  the  clerk,  Charles  Thompson.1 

1  Some  of  the  men  whose  names  thus  mistakenly  appear  as  signers 
on  July  4  were  not  present  in  Congress  that  day,  and  some  were 
not  even  members  of  Congress  then.  The  original  Declaration,  in 
the  handwriting  of  Jefferson,  as  reported  from  the  committee  to 
Congress,  is  preserved  with  the  Jefferson  manuscripts  in  the  De 
partment  of  State.  The  engrossed  copy,  signed  by  the  members,  is 
also  there,  but  since  1894  it  has  been  kept  from  public  view,  in  a  steel 
case,  to  prevent  further  fading  and  cracking  of  the  parchment.  Jef 
ferson  made  a  number  of  copies  of  the  Declaration  in  his  own  hand 
writing  for  various  friends.  Two  of  these  copies  are  now  in  Wash 
ington,  another  was  given  by  R.  H.  Lee  to  the  American  Philosophi 
cal  Society  at  Philadelphia,  a  fourth  is  in  the  Lenox  Division  of  the 
Public  Library  of  New  York,  a  fifth  in  possession  of  the  Massa- 


44  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

Many  years  after  the  Declaration  was  written, 
when  Jefferson  and  Adams  had  become  estranged 
by  bitter  partisan  strife,  the  Massachusetts  patriot; 
both  in  his  Autobiography  and  in  his  letters,  sought 
to  belittle  Jefferson's  merits.  He  declared  that  he 
and  Jefferson  were  both  appointed  as  a  subcom 
mittee  to  make  the  draft;  that  they  each  urged  the 
other  to  write  it;  that  he  finally  persuaded  his 
younger  colleague  to  do  the  work  because  he  was 
not  only  a  better  writer  but  was  a  Virginian  and  a 
"less  obnoxious  and  suspected"  (" distinguished "?) 
person  than  himself;  and  that  finally,  after  some 
strictures  on  the  document  which  Jefferson  pre 
pared,  he  "consented  to  report  it"  to  the  committee. 
As  to  the  Declaration  itself,  Adams  wrote  to  Pick 
ering  in  1822:  "As  you  justly  observe,  there  is  not 
an  idea  in  it  but  what  had  been  hackneyed  in  Con 
gress  for  two  years  before.  .  .  .  Indeed,  the  essence 
of  it  is  contained  in  a  pamphlet,  voted  and  printed 
by  the  town  of  Boston,  before  the  first  Congress  met, 
composed  by  James  Otis,  as  I  suppose  in  one  of  his 
lucid  intervals,  and  pruned  and  polished  by  Samuel 
Adams." 
Jefferson's  reply  to  these  ungracious  remarks  of 


chusetts  Historical  Society.  Copies  that  we  know  from  Jefferson's 
correspondence  were  given  to  Page,  Pendleton,  Wythe,  and  Mazzei 
have  disappeared.  A  great  number  of  facsimiles  are  in  existence, 
two  hundred  having  been  made  by  order  of  Congress  in  1824  and 
presented  to  the  three  surviving  signers — Jefferson,  Adams,  and 
Charles  Carroll  of  Carrollton. 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE    45 

the  man  who  forty-six  years  earlier  had  stood  by  his 
side  as  "the  Colossus  of  the  Debate "  on  the  adop 
tion  of  the  Declaration,  is  simply  that  the  committee 
"unanimously  pressed'7  him  to  write  the  draft,  that 
he  submitted  it  to  Adams  and  Franklin  for  their 
corrections  (which  were  trifling),  that  as  to  its 
merits  he  was  not  the  judge.  "Otis'  pamphlet  I 
never  saw,"  he  continues,  "and  whether  I  had 
gathered  my  ideas  from  reading  or  reflection  I  do 
not  know.  I  only  know  that  I  turned  to  neither 
book  nor  pamphlet  while  writing  it.  I  did  not 
consider  it  as  any  part  of  my  charge  to  invent  new 
ideas  altogether,  and  to  offer  no  sentiments  which 
had  ever  been  expressed  before." 

It  is  precisely  the  marvelous  skill  of  Jefferson  in 
focussing  in  sharp,  distinct  lines  the  wavering  senti 
ment  of  independence  that  makes  his  document  so 
great.  For  us  the  Declaration  of  Independence  is 
the  birth  certificate  of  the  American  nation;  for  the 
men  of  1776  it  was  a  proclamation,  a  bugle-call.  It 
cleared  the  air.  Men  were  no  longer  to  wonder  how 
they  could  "own  the  King  and  fight  against  him  at 
the  same  time,"  as  a  Delaware  patriot  said.  Hesi 
tation  was  at  an  end.  The  Tories  had  been  lagging 
brothers,  fearful  of  treason  to  their  King.  The 
Declaration  made  them  traitors  to  America.  Cau 
tion  and  calculation  had  postponed  the  fatal  step 
of  separation  from  Great  Britain.  The  middle  col 
onies  were  lukewarm;  decisive  action  might  mean 


46'  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

their  secession.  And  the  same  rash  step  that  pro 
duced  division  at  home  would  cement  the  union  of 
Whigs  and  Tories  in  England.  For  the  Whigs  were 
our  friends  as  long  as  we  demanded  reforms,  but 
our  enemies  when  we  fell  away  from  the  empire. 
The  same  William  Pitt  who  "rejoiced"  that  America 
had  resisted  the  Stamp  Act,  declared  a  few  years 
later  that  if  he  believed  that  the  Americans  enter 
tained  "the  most  distant  intention  of  throwing  off 
the  legislative  supremacy  of  Great  Britain,"'  he 
would  be  the  first  to  enforce  British  authority 
"by  every  exertion  the  country  was  capable  of 
making."  In  the  compelling  faith  of  freedom  the 
Declaration  risked  the  double  danger  of  a  disunited 
America  and  a  united  England.  And  its  faith  was 
justified. 

Not  all  were  won  to  the  patriot  cause.  Careful 
students  of  the  loyalist  sentiment  in  the  American 
Revolution  believe  that  fully  one-third  of  the  popu 
lation  of  the  colonies  held  by  the  King.  But  the 
men  who  were  waiting  to  have  the  issue  clearly  de 
fined,  the  leaders  who  for  a  decade  had  felt  the  con 
victions  of  their  heart  growing  to  belie  the  profes 
sions  of  their  lips,  the  soldiers  who  wanted  to  know 
finally  for  what  they  were  fighting,  hailed  the  Dec 
laration  with  joy.  It  was  read  in  courts  and  council 
halls,  on  public  squares  and  village  greens,  from  pul 
pits  and  platforms.  It  was  received  with  proces 
sions,  banquets,  and  salvos  of  cannon.  In  Phila- 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE    47 

delphia  the  people  tore  down  the  "late  King's"  arms 
from  the  State  House  and  burned  them  in  a  bonfire 
on  Independence  Square.  In  New  York  the  troops 
and  citizens  together,  after  hearing  the  Declaration 
read,  proceeded  to  Bowling  Green  and  dragged 
down  the  leaden  equestrian  statue  of  George  III, 
which  was  melted  up  into  bullets  for  patriot  rifles. 
The  citizens  of  Savannah,  after  a  day  of  feasting, 
burned  George  III  in  effigy  and  read  a  mock  funeral 
service  over  his  grave.  Uncertainties,  timidities, 
inconsistencies  were  removed.  The  issue  was  clearly 
defined  and  the  battle  fairly  joined.  On  July  9 
George  Washington  published  the  Declaration  to 
his  army  in  New  York  with  the  following  order: 
"The  General  hopes  that  this  important  event  will 
serve  as  an  incentive  to  every  officer  and  soldier  to 
act  with  fidelity  and  courage,  as  knowing  now  that 
the  peace  and  safety  of  his  country  depend,  under 
God,  solely  on  the  success  of  our  arms."  It  is  said 
that  the  Marseillaise  was  worth  ten  thousand  men 
to  the  Jacobin  generals  of  the  French  Revolution. 
Who  shall  say  how  many  regiments  the  Declaration 
of  Independence  was  worth  to  the  great  patriot  who 
bore  the  burden  of  our  tottering  cause  from  Brooklyn 
Heights  to  Yorktown ! 

One  other  service  of  far-reaching  importance  the 
Declaration  rendered  to  the  American  cause.  It 
was  a  stroke  of  diplomacy.  So  long  as  we  were  fight 
ing  to  reform  the  British  Empire,  the  secret  commit- 


48  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

tee  on  foreign  correspondence  appointed  by  Con 
gress  on  November  29,  1775,  could  hardly  expect 
any  aid  from  European  nations.  But  when  the 
cause  which  we  submitted  to  a  "candid  world"  took 
the  form  of  independence  help  came.  As  soon  as 
Louis  XVTs  government  heard  that  the  American 
colonies  had  declared  themselves  free  it  proposed 
that  France  and  Spain  should  begin  war  against 
Great  Britain.  Men  and  money  began  to  come  to 
us  from  France.  In  October  our  agent  in  Paris, 
Silas  Deane,  could  ship  to  America  a  large  amount 
of  ammunition,  thirty  thousand  muskets,  and  cloth 
ing  for  twenty  thousand  soldiers.  The  commission 
from  the  independent  United  States  of  America, 
which  superseded  Deane's  agency  in  Paris  at  the 
close  of  1776,  made  steady  progress  toward  the 
negotiation  of  our  first  treaties  of  alliance  and  com 
merce.  Jefferson  had  been  asked  to  serve  on  this 
commission  with  Franklin  and  Deane,  but  another 
service,  which  we  shall  study  in  our  next  chapter, 
appealed  to  him  with  a  clearer  call,  and  Arthur  Lee 
was  substituted  in  his  place.  That  foreign  nations 
helped  us  for  the  destruction  of  the  British  Empire 
rather  than  for  the  establishment  of  the  American 
Republic  did  not  affect  the  value  of  their  aid.  What 
that  value  was  every  student  of  the  American  Revo 
lution  knows.  Whether  or  not  we  should  have  even 
tually  established  our  independence  without  the  help 
of  France  it  is  impossible  to  say.  So  judicious  a 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE    49 

scholar  as  Mr.  Lecky  believes  that  most  of  the  States 
would  have  given  up  the  struggle  without  this  help. 
Although  New  England  and  Virginia  might  have 
kept  up  a  valiant  but  desperate  resistance  for  a 
time,  "  the  peace  party  would  soon  have  gained  the 
ascendancy  and  the  colonies  have  been  reunited  to 
the  mother  country." 

The  Declaration  of  Independence  was  a  fitting 
climax  to  Jefferson's  splendid  campaign  for  political 
freedom,  and  would  alone  suffice  to  place  him  high 
in  the  honor-roll  of  the  founders  of  the  American 
state.  It  was  a  masterly  condensation  of  the  Sum 
mary  View  and  the  Reply  to  Lord  North,  thrown  into 
the  form  of  a  stirring  manifesto  to  the  American 
people  and  the  world  at  large.  And  its  influence  on 
America  and  the  world  at  large  has  been  beyond 
calculation.  Even  England  herself,  led  astray  for 
the  moment  by  false  counsels,  was  helped  by  its 
plain  and  ruthless  lesson  to  regain  the  path  of  jus 
tice;  for  the  Declaration  was  an  appeal  from  an 
England  badly  governed  to  an  England  to  be  better 
governed.  It  was  the  voice  of  Milton  speaking 
again.  There  is  no  need  to  introduce  Rousseau  and 
the  French  philosophers  of  the  eighteenth  century 
to  explain  Jefferson's  language.  "  The  natural  rights 
of  man"  was  a  doctrine  as  old  as  the  Roman  law, 
and  "government  by  consent  of  the  governed"  was 
the  principle  for  which  the  "republicans"  of  the 
seventeenth  century  had  fought  their  battle  of  four- 


50  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

score  years  against  the  Stuart  kings.  It  is  doubtful 
whether  Jefferson  had  read  a  word  of  Rousseau's 
Contrat  social  in  1776,  but  for  a  decade  he  had  been 
a  profound  student  of  Coke  and  Milton,  of  Harring 
ton  and  Locke.1 

To  the  end  of  his  long  career  of  varied  service  to 
the  American  Republic  Jefferson  continued  faithful 
to  the  doctrine  of  government  by  the  consent  of  the 
governed,  of  confidence  in  the  people  to  shape  their 
own  political  destinies,  of  liberty  as  a  gift  of  God 
and  not  a  grant  from  monarchs.  On  the  approach 
of  the  fiftieth  anniversary  of  the  Declaration  of 
Independence  the  city  of  Washington  invited  Jef 
ferson  to  take  part  in  its  celebration.  He  had 
entered  his  eighty-fourth  year  and  was  too  feeble 
to  accept  the  invitation.  But  in  his  letter  of  regret 
written  to  Mayor  Weightman  on  June  24,  1826 — 
the  last  letter  of  his  life — he  renewed  his  pledge  to 
the  doctrines  of  the  immortal  Declaration  and  sum 
moned  his  countrymen  to  "an  undiminished  devo 
tion"  to  its  principles:  "May  it  be  to  the  world 
what  I  believe  it  will  be  (to  some  parts  sooner,  to 
others  later,  but  finally  to  all),  the  signal  of  arousing 
men  to  burst  the  chains  under  which  monkish  igno 
rance  and  superstition  had  persuaded  them  to  bind 

1  The  influence  of  John  Locke's  Two  Treatises  on  Government,  pub 
lished  at  the  time  of  the  English  revolution  of  1688-9,  is  traceable 
even  to  words  and  phrases  in  the  Declaration.  Compare  the  ex 
amples  cited  from  Locke's  second  Treatise  by  Professor  Channing, 
in  his  History  of  the  United  States,  vol.  Ill,  p.  10. 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE     51 

themselves,  and  to  assume  the  blessings  and  security 
of  self-go vernment." 

On  the  granite  obelisk  which  he  had  chosen  for 
his  monument,  Jefferson  asked  to  have  three  of  his 
services  to  the  cause  of  liberty  inscribed.  The  first 
was:  AUTHOR  OF  THE  DECLARATION  OF  AMERICAN 
INDEPENDENCE. 


CHAPTER  III 
THE  REFORM  OF  THE  VIRGINIA  CODE 

The  Gothic  idea  that  we  are  to  look  backwards  instead  of  forwards 
for  the  improvement  of  the  human  mind,  and  to  recur  to  the  annals  of 
our  ancestors  for  what  is  most  perfect  in  government,  in  religion,  and 
in  learning,  is  worthy  of  those  bigots  in  religion  and  government  by 
whom  it  has  been  recommended,  and  whose  purpose  it  would  answer. 
(Jefferson  to  Joseph  Priestley,  January  27,  1800.) 

"LIBERTY  and  union,  now  and  forever,  one  and  in 
separable!"  Since  Daniel  Webster  pronounced  the 
marriage  banns  between  liberty  and  union,  and  Abra 
ham  Lincoln  stopped  the  action  for  divorce,  the  tie 
has  remained  consecrated  and  inviolable  in  our 
American  democracy.  But  Liberty  was  a  jealous 
maiden,  needing  many  years  of  wooing  before  she 
would  consent  to  Union,  and  dwelling  long  even 
after  her  grudging  consent  was  given  on  the  fear  of 
"losing  her  freedom."  It  was  liberty,  not  union, 
for  which  our  fathers  fought  in  the  Revolution. 
Union  was  the  necessary  means,  for  unless  the  pa 
triots  of  Massachusetts  and  Virginia,  of  Pennsyl 
vania  and  Georgia,  made  common  cause,  they  could 
not  hope  to  win.  But  the  union  was  only  the  sum 
of  its  parts,  a  federation,  and  the  Congress  a  central 
board  of  direction,  without  any  specified  powers  or 
sanctioned  authority,  until  a  few  months  before  the 

62 


REFORM  OF  THE  VIRGINIA  CODE    53 

British  surrender  at  Yorktown.  Even  for  eight 
years  afterward  it  was  without  the  fundamental 
sovereign  rights  of  taxation  and  executive  au 
thority.  There  was  no  national  government  during 
the  American  Revolution  and  the  "critical  period" 
which  followed,  but  only  a  national  committee  con 
vened  by  the  governments  of  the  States.  There 
was  no  supreme  national  state,  but  only  a  consensus 
of  the  States.  If  Congress  actually  assumed  great 
powers,  raised  and  equipped  armies,  declared  inde 
pendence,  borrowed  money,  and  concluded  treaties, 
it  was  only  as  the  steward  of  the  interests  of  the 
States  and  in  some  cases  by  their  explicit  mandate. 
The  Congress  of  the  Confederation  exercised  only 
powers  of  attorney. 

Unless  we  realize  these  facts  we  shall  misunder 
stand  the  spirit  and  misjudge  the  men  of  the  early 
years  of  our  history.  " Citizenship,"  "patriotism," 
"allegiance,"  and  the  like  terms,  which  inevitably 
mean  for  us  American  citizenship,  patriotism,  and 
allegiance,  had  a  different  signification  before  our 
national  state  was  firmly  founded,  before  we  had  a 
national  domain,  before  our  national  courts  admin 
istered  a  national  law  impartially  throughout  our 
land,  before  a  powerful  national  executive  was  chosen 
by  a  nation-wide  franchise  to  conduct  the  govern 
ment,  not  of  a  majority  of  the  States  nor  even  of  the 
sum  of  the  States,  but  of  a  new,  independent,  and 
autonomous  United  States.  In  the  early  days  there 


54  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

were  citizens  of  New  Hampshire,  of  New  York,  of 
Virginia,  of  South  Carolina,  attached  by  long  tradi 
tion  to  their  colonial  institutions,  and  owing  a  larger 
but  remote  allegiance  only  to  a  King  or  Parliament 
across  the  ocean.  Their  "land"  was  not  England, 
however,  nor  yet  America,  but  the  particular  colony 
in  which  they  lived.  In  his  Notes  on  Virginia,  pub 
lished  just  at  the  close  of  the  American  Revolution, 
Jefferson  constantly  speaks  of  Virginia  as  "my 
country."  When  the  breach  with  England  came, 
the  most  immediate  and  urgent  duty  of  patriots, 
next  to  vindicating  their  independence  in  arms,  was 
to  reshape  the  government  of  their  new-fledged 
"States"  to  accord  with  the  political  principles 
which  had  been  developing  in  the  American  mind 
since  the  publication  in  1762  of  James  Otis's  Vin 
dication  of  the  Conduct  of  the  House  of  Representa 
tives  of  the  Province  of  Massachusetts  Bay. 

In  no  other  State  was  the  need  of  reform  more 
crying  than  in  Virginia.  New  England,  often  aris 
tocratic  and  intolerant  enough  in  practice,  had,  nev 
ertheless,  the  seeds  of  democratic  institutions  in  its 
founding.  "I  can  give  you  the  receipt  for  making  a 
New  England  in  Virginia,"  said  John  Adams  one 
day  at  dinner  to  a  friend  from  the  Old  Dominion 
who  was  bewailing  its  conservatism — "town-meet 
ings,  training  days,  schools,  and  ministers."  The 
Middle  States,  with  their  cosmopolitan  population, 
their  commercial  preoccupations,  their  religious  va- 


REFORM  OF  THE  VIRGINIA  CODE    55 

nations,  escaped  the  cramping  mould  of  a  social 
type-form.  But  Virginia  was  social  England  trans 
planted.  The  Old  Dominion,  "most  faithful  of  the 
King's  distant  children,"  as  Charles  II  called  it, 
clung  tenaciously  to  its  habits  when  its  children 
came  of  age.  Estates  were  held  in  "fee  tail":  that 
is,  not  an  acre  or  a  slave  could  be  alienated  to  pay 
the  debt  which  might  hang  like  a  millstone  about 
the  neck  of  an  incompetent  or  extravagant  proprie 
tor.  The  law  of  primogeniture  devised  the  entire 
property  to  the  eldest  son,  leaving  his  mother  and 
sisters  dependent  on  his  bounty  and  condemning  the 
younger  brothers  to  be  pensioners  or  adventurers. 
The  landed  aristocracy  lacked  only  the  titles  of  their 
English  cousins  to  be  a  complete  caste.  Between 
them  and  the  negroes  were  only  the  "poor  whites/' 
a  miserable  class  pushed  by  the  rich  planters  into 
the  unfertile  uplands  and  excluded  by  the  slaves 
from  the  dignified  diversity  of  labor.  A  solid  middle 
class,  industrious,  inventive,  educated,  conscious  of 
its  freedom,  sharing  equitably  in  the  soil,  the  bone 
and  marrow  of  a  community,  was  lacking. 

Stupid  and  cruel  laws  stood  on  the  statute-books 
of  Virginia,  laws  the  more  cruel  and  stupid  because 
the  exercise  of  the  royal  veto  in  the  colony  had  dis 
couraged  the  efforts  for  reform.  Jefferson  speaks 
bitterly  in  his  Memoir  of  the  "negations  (vetoes)  of 
councils,  governors,  and  kings,"  to  restrain  us  from 
doing  right.  Twenty-three  acts  against  the  slave- 


56  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

trade  were  passed  by  the  Virginia  House  of  Bur 
gesses  between  the  years  1699  and  1772,  and  every 
one  of  them  was  vetoed  by  the  King  or  by  his  gov 
ernor  in  the  colony.  There  were  laws  against  witch 
craft,  laws  for  the  ducking  of  women  and  the  inflic 
tion  of  the  barbarous  punishment  of  the  lex  talionis 
—"an  eye  for  an  eye,  a  tooth  for  a  tooth."  There 
were  heresy  laws  which,  if  enforced,  would  have 
brought  Thomas  Jefferson  to  the  stake.  To  deny 
the  Trinity  meant  three  years7  imprisonment.  A 
Unitarian  or  a  freethinker  was  considered  unfit  to 
be  the  custodian  of  his  own  children.  "I  want  to 
breathe  again  your  free  air,"  wrote  young  James 
Madison  to  a  northern  friend  after  he  had  returned 
to  Virginia  from  Princeton  College.  He  cried  out 
against  "the  diabolical,  hell-conceived  principle  of 
persecution"  that  "raged"  among  the  clergy  of  his 
native  State,  and  declared  that  the  King  would  re 
duce  all  America  to  submission  if  the  Church  of 
England  were  established  and  endowed  in  all  the 
colonies  as  it  was  in  Virginia. 

The  reform  of  the  political  and  social  institutions 
of  his  "country,"  in  such  glaring  contradiction  to 
the  republican  principles  which  he  himself  and  a 
score  of  other  able  writers,  like  Otis,  the  Adamses, 
Dickinson,  Hopkins,  and  Bland,  had  made  the  ac 
cepted  doctrine  of  the  American  Revolution,  ap 
pealed  to  Jefferson  with  irresistible  force.  He  threw 
himself  into  the  work  with  unflagging  zeal,  seizing 


REFORM  OF  THE  VIRGINIA  CODE    57 

"the  laboring  oar."  In  September  he  resigned  the 
seat  in  Congress  to  which  he  had  been  re-elected, 
and  on  October  7  entered  the  Virginia  house  of  dele 
gates,  the  first  legislature  of  the  State  convened 
under  its  new  constitution.1  The  day  he  took  his 
seat  a  messenger  from  Congress  arrived  at  Williams- 
burg,  with  the  flattering  invitation  for  him  to  join 
Franklin  and  Deane  at  Paris  in  a  mission  to  seek  aid 
from  France  and  other  European  countries.  Jeffer 
son  wanted  very  much  to  go.  The  attractions  of 
the  "capital  city  of  the  world,"  its  music,  art,  letters, 
and  science,  appealed  strongly  to  the  refined  tastes 
and  insatiable  mental  curiosity  of  the  young  man 
of  thirty-three.  He  considered  the  offer  three  days, 

1  The  Virginia  constitution  of  1776,  with  the  noble  bill  of  rights 
accompanying  it,  was  drawn  by  George  Mason.  Jefferson  was  in 
Congress  at  the  time  and  serving  on  several  committees;  but  he 
found  time  to  write  the  full  draft  of  a  constitution  for  Virginia,  which 
he  forwarded  to  the  convention  at  Richmond  by  his  friend  George 
Wythe.  It  arrived  on  the  very  day  that  Mason's  draft,  after  sev 
eral  weeks  of  debate,  "inch  by  inch,"  was  finally  reported  to  the 
house,  and  the  committee  was  unwilling,  "from  mere  lassitude," 
as  Jefferson  says,  to  reopen  the  debates  on  the  subject.  However, 
they  liked  Jefferson's  preamble  so  well  that  they  "tacked  it  on  the 
work  of  George  Mason."  Jefferson's  draft  was  lost  for  a  hundred 
years.  It  is  published  in  full  in  P.  L.  Ford's  edition  of  Jefferson's 
Writings  (vol.  II,  pp.  7-30),  and  it  is  well  worth  study  both  as  a 
foretaste  of  the  legislation  which  Jefferson  introduced  into  the 
house  and  as  an  illustration  of  his  jealousy  of  the  executive  power. 
Jefferson  thought  that  a  new  convention  should  have  been  convened 
with  specified  constituent  powers  for  so  serious  a  matter  as  framing 
a  new  State  constitution.  In  view  of  the  development  of  the  doc 
trine  of  "States'  rights"  in  the  South,  it  is  a  fact  of  curious  inter 
est  that  a  Virginia  member,  Ludwell  Lee,  proposed  in  1776  that 
Congress  should  "  prepare  a  uniform  plan  for  the  governments  in 
America  to  be  approved  by  the  colonies  "  (States). 


58  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

and  then  resolutely  put  the  noble  temptation  behind 
him.  He  had  put  his  hand  to  the  plough  to  break  up 
the  hard  and  stubborn  soil  of  generations  of  feudal 
privilege  and  aristocratic  caste  in  his  beloved  "coun 
try"  of  Virginia;  and  having  put  his  hand  to  the 
plough  he  would  not  turn  back.  "When  I  left  Con 
gress  in  1776,"  he  says  in  his  Memoir,  "it  was  in  the 
persuasion  that  our  whole  code  must  be  reviewed, 
adapted  to  our  republican  form  of  government,  and 
.  .  .  corrected  in  all  its  parts,  with  a  single  eye  to 
reason  and  the  good  of  those  for  whose  government 
it  was  framed." 

On  October  11  Jefferson  was  appointed  on  several 
important  committees  of  the  legislature,  and  the 
next  day  he  obtained  leave  to  introduce  a  "Bill  to 
enable  tenants  in  tail  to  convey  their  lands  in  fee 
simple."  The  bill  was  passed.  "It  was  the  first 
great  blow  at  the  aristocratic  class  in  Virginia," 
which  had  been  based  on  the  transmission  of  un 
divided  estates  from  one  generation  to  the  next.  It 
had  formed,  says  Jefferson,  "a  patrician  order  dis 
tinguished  by  the  splendor  and  luxury  of  their  es 
tablishments,"  an  order  from  which  "the  King 
habitually  selected  his  counsellors  of  state."  "To 
annul  this  privilege  and  instead  of  an  aristocracy  of 
wealth  ...  to  make  an  opening  for  the  aristocracy 
of  virtue  and  talent,  which  nature  has  wisely  pro 
vided  for  the  direction  of  the  interests  of  society 
and  scattered  with  equal  hand  through  all  its  con- 


REFORM  OF  THE  VIRGINIA  CODE    59 

ditions,  was  deemed  essential  to  a  well-ordered  re 
public."  1  With  entails  went  the  allied  institution 
of  primogeniture.  Pendleton,  in  behalf  of  the  old 
families  of  Virginia,  pleaded  that  the  eldest  son 
might  have  at  least  double  the  portion  of  the 
younger  ones,  but  Jefferson  was  inexorable:  not  un 
less  the  eldest  son  needed  a  double  portion  of  food, 
he  said,  or  did  a  double  portion  of  work ! 

The  social  revolution  wrought  by  this  legislation 
was  complete.  It  threw  every  acre  of  land  and  every 
slave  in  Virginia  into  the  economic  current  of  ex 
change  and  put  all  heirs  on  an  equality.  The  old 
Virginia  families  were  attached  to  their  estates  with 
a  religious  devotion.  "They  had  come  chiefly  from 
the  country  districts  of  England,"  says  Shaler,  "and 
their  absorbing  passion  was  the  possession  of  land." 
There  is  a  story  that  John  Randolph  of  Roanoke 
set  his  dogs  on  a  man  who  came  to  ask  the  price  of 
the  estate.  The  thought  of  any  of  the  beloved 
acres  of  Tuckahoe  or  Mount  Vernon  or  Rose- 
well  or  Gunston  Hall  going  into  the  hands  of  a 
stranger  was  like  treason  or  profanation.  The  aris 
tocrats  of  Virginia,  among  them  some  of  his  own  kin 
on  his  mother's  side,  never  forgave  Jefferson  for  this 


1  It  is  only  an  instance  of  the  depreciatory  tone  in  which  certain 
historians  still  deal  with  Jefferson,  when  J.  T.  Morse  cites  this  sim 
ple,  straightforward  statement  as  written  in  "Jefferson's  grandiose, 
humanitarian,  and  self-laudatory  vein."  Humanitarian  it  may  be 
— the  more  the  credit ! — but  what  there  is  grandiose  or  self -laudatory 
about  it  is  hard  to  see, 


60  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

legislation,  put  through  the  house  by  the  influence 
of  the  democracy  of  the  counties  back  of  the  tide 
water.  There  were  even  those  who,  adding  a  Bour 
bon  piety  to  a  Bourbon  pride,  declared  that  the 
death  of  Jefferson's  only  son  in  infancy  (1777)  was 
a  "  judgment  of  God  "  upon  him;  and  fifty  years  later, 
when  Virginia  was  declining  in  economic  prestige 
before  the  rising  manufactures  of  the  North,  there 
were  still  belated  Cassandras  harping  on  the  ruin 
to  the  State  caused  by  Jefferson's  abolition  of  entail 
and  primogeniture. 

It  would  take  us  far  beyond  the  limits  of  this  brief 
biography  to  give  even  the  merest  outline  of  the 
manifold  activities  of  Jefferson  in  the  new  Virginia 
Legislature  of  1776.  In  the  opening  month  of 
October,  for  example,  besides  elaborating  the  laws 
on  entails  and  descent,  he  served  on  committees 
dealing  with  naturalization  laws,  the  definition  of 
treason,  the  location  of  the  capital,  the  encourage 
ment  of  manufactures,  the  improvement  of  naviga 
tion,  the  organization  of  courts,  the  regulation  of 
the  militia,  the  refining  of  the  currency.  There 
were  two  of  these  October  committees,  however,  on 
which  Jefferson's  work  was  so  significant  and  lasting 
that  we  must  devote  a  few  pages  to  them — the 
standing  committee  "of  religion,"  appointed  Octo 
ber  11,  and  the  committee,  chosen  in  pursuance  of 
Jefferson's  bill  of  October  24,  for  the  "revision  of 
the  laws." 


REFORM  OF  THE  VIRGINIA  CODE    61 

Religion  was  in  a  parlous  state  in  Virginia.  The 
Episcopal  Church  was  established  by  law,  endowed 
with  lands  (glebes),  and  supported  by  taxes  (tithes). 
Secure  in  their  position,  the  clergy  performed  their 
Sunday  duties  in  a  proper  and  perfunctory  fashion, 
paying  little  attention  to  either  religion  or  charities 
during  the  week.  They  were,  as  some  one  remarked, 
"a  gentleman's  club."  " Against  this  inactivity," 
says  Jefferson,  "the  zeal  and  industry  of  the  secta 
rian  (especially  the  Baptist)  preachers  had  an  open 
and  undisputed  field;  and  by  the  time  of  the  Revo 
lution  a  majority  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  colony 
had  become  dissenters  from  the  established  church, 
but  were  still  obliged  to  pay  contributions  to  sup 
port  the  pastors  of  the  minority."  The  legislature 
of  1776  was  "  crowded  with  petitions  to  abolish  this 
spiritual  tyranny."  Jefferson  wanted  full  religious 
liberty  and  a  complete  separation  of  church  and 
state;  but  the  powers  of  the  establishment  were  too 
strong.  If  the  majority  of  the  inhabitants  were 
dissenters,  the  majority  of  the  legislature  were 
churchmen.  After  a  bitter  fight  of  two  months,  all 
that  the  radicals  could  obtain  was  a  repeal  of  the 
laws  making  heresy  or  absence  from  worship  a 
crime  and  forcing  dissenters  to  contribute  to  the 
support  of  the  church.  Jefferson  kept  up  the  fight, 
however,  from  session  to  session,  until  in  the  sum 
mer  of  1779  the  Anglican  Church  was  disestab 
lished.  Another  seven  years  passed  before  the  man 


62  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

on  whom  Jefferson's  mantle  fell  in  the  Virginia  Leg 
islature,  James  Madison,  was  able  to  get  the  bill  for 
religious  liberty  passed. 

This  famous  bill  was  drawn  by  Jefferson  in  June, 
1779,  and  watched  through  all  its  fortunes  with 
jealous  care.  Jefferson  was  our  minister  in  Paris 
when  the  bill  finally  passed  in  1786.  He  had  it 
printed  in  both  English  and  French  and  circulated 
as  a  pamphlet.  It  was  received  with  great  enthusi 
asm  in  Europe.  And  well  it  might  be!  For  al 
though  there  were  lands  in  which  religious  persecu 
tion  had  wholly  ceased  in  western  Europe,  there 
was  no  sovereign  state  in  Christendom  in  the  year 
1786  that  had  formally  proclaimed  in  its  laws  the 
absolute  religious  freedom  of  every  one  of  its  citi 
zens.  The  honor  of  making  that  declaration  to  the 
world  was  Virginia's — and  Thomas  Jefferson's.1 
The  second  of  the  three  services  which  Jefferson 
asked  to  have  engraved  on  his  monument  was: 
AUTHOR  OF  THE  STATUTE  OF  VIRGINIA  FOR  RELIG 
IOUS  FREEDOM. 

The  magnificent  language  of  this  statute,  though 

1  Some  of  the  foremost  men  of  Virginia  in  the  struggle  for  political 
liberty  were  opposed  to  the  radical  religious  programme  of  Jefferson, 
Madison,  and  Monroe.  Henry  and  R.  H.  Lee  both  believed  with 
the  clergy  that  religion  would  be  destroyed  "without  a  legal  obliga 
tion  to  contribute  something  to  its  support."  Washington  wrote 
Mason  in  1785:  "Although  no  man's  sentiments  are  more  opposed 
to  any  kind  of  restraint  upon  religious  principles  than  mine  are,  yet 
I  confess  I  am  not  among  the  number  of  those  who  are  so  much 
alarmed  at  making  men  pay  toward  the  support  of  that  which  they 
profess," 


REFORM  OF  THE  VIRGINIA  CODE    63 

unfortunately  it  must  be  somewhat  abbreviated, 
shall  stand  here  without  paraphrase  or  comment: 

Well  aware  that  the  opinions  and  beliefs  of  men  depend 
not  on  their  own  will,  but  follow  involuntarily  the  evi 
dence  proposed  to  their  minds;  that  Almighty  God  hath 
created  the  mind  free,  and  manifested  his  supreme  will 
that  free  it  shall  remain,  by  making  it  altogether  insus 
ceptible  of  restraint;  that  all  attempts  to  influence  it  by 
temporal  punishments  or  burthens,  or  by  civil  incapacita- 
tions,  tend  only  to  beget  habits  of  hypocrisy  and  mean 
ness;  .  .  .  that  the  impious  presumption  of  legislature 
and  ruler,  civil  as  well  as  ecclesiastical,  who  being  them 
selves  but  fallible  and  uninspired  men,  have  assumed  do 
minion  over  the  faith  of  others  .  .  .  hath  established 
and  maintained  false  religions  over  the  greatest  part  of 
the  world  and  thro*  all  time;  that  to  compel  a  man  to 
furnish  contributions  of  money  for  the  propagation  of 
opinions  which  he  disbelieves  and  abhors,  is  sinful  and 
tyrannical;  .  .  .  that  our  civil  rights  have  no  dependence 
on  our  religious  opinions  any  more  than  on  our  opinions 
in  physics  or  geometry;  .  .  .  that  the  opinions  of  men 
are  not  the  object  of  civil  government,  nor  under  its  juris 
diction;  .  .  .  that  it  is  time  enough  for  the  rightful  pur 
poses  of  civil  government  for  its  officers  to  interfere  when 
principles  break  out  into  overt  acts  against  peace  and 
good  order;  and  finally  that  truth  is  great  and  will  pre 
vail  if  left  to  herself  .  .  .  errors  ceasing  to  be  dangerous 
when  it  is  permitted  freely  to  contradict  them:  We  the 
General  Assembly  of  Virginia  do  enact  that  no  man  shall 
be  compelled  to  frequent  or  support  any  religious  worship, 
place,  or  ministry  whatsoever,  nor  shall  be  enforced,  re 
strained,  molested,  or  burthened  in  his  body  or  goods,  or 
shall  otherwise  suffer  on  account  of  his  religious  opinions 


64  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

or  beliefs;  but  that  all  men  shall  be  free  to  profess  and  by 
argument  to  maintain  their  opinions  in  matters  of  religion, 
and  that  the  same  shall  in  no  wise  diminish,  enlarge,  or 
affect  their  civil  capacities." 

The  Jeffersonian  principle  of  religious  freedom 
was  introduced  into  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States  by  the  First  Amendment,  chiefly  through  the 
efforts  of  James  Madison,  and  for  half  a  century  it 
furnished  the  progressive  men  of  every  State  the 
inspiration  and  arguments  for  religious  emancipa 
tion,  until  civil  authority  and  religious  conformity 
were  divorced  in  every  part  of  the  Union.  We  re 
gard  religious  liberty  as  a  natural  right  to-day,  and 
look  on  it  as  intolerable  that  any  man  should  pre 
sume  to  have  in  his  keeping  the  conscience  of 
another.  Yet  this  was  not  so  when  Jefferson  began 
his  liberating  work  a  century  and  a  half  ago.  It  is 
often  the  greatest  benefits  that  we  requite  with  the 
least  gratitude,  because  they  are  just  the  ones  which 
we  can  least  imagine  ourselves  being  without.  No 
invention  of  science,  no  creation  of  art,  no  reform  of 
politics  can  compare  in  importance  for  the  human 
race  with  freedom  of  conscience. 

We  have  seen  that  Jefferson's  avowed  object  in 
leaving  Congress  for  a  seat  in  the  Virginia  Legisla 
ture  was  the  reform  of  the  entire  law  code  of  his 
State,  "with  a  single  eye  to  reason  and  the  good  of 
those  for  whose  government  it  was  framed."  In  No 
vember,  1776,  a  committee  of  revision  was  appointed, 


REFORM  OF  THE  VIRGINIA  CODE    65 

consisting  of  Jefferson,  Pendleton,  Wythe,  Mason, 
and  T.  L.  Lee.  They  met  at  Fredericksburg  early 
in  January  to  agree  on  the  principles  of  revision 
and  to  portion  out  the  work  among  themselves. 
When  they  came  to  the  actual  work  of  revision,  how 
ever,  Mason  and  Lee  resigned  from  the  committee 
because  they  were  not  lawyers,  and  the  whole  work 
fell  upon  the  other  three.  Jefferson's  burden  was, 
as  usual,  the  heaviest.  To  him  was  assigned  the 
whole  field  of  the  common  law  and  statutes  of  Eng 
land  down  to  the  foundation  of  the  colony  of  Vir 
ginia  in  1607.  The  British  statutes  from  1607  to 
the  end  of  the  colonial  period  were  assigned  .to 
Wythe  and  the  Virginia  laws  during  the  same 
period  to  Pendleton.  After  two  full  years'  work  in 
their  respective  fields,  the  committee  met  at  Wil- 
liamsburg  in  February,  1779,  and  went  over  the  re 
sults  together,  "day  by  day,  sentence  by  sentence, 
scrutinizing  and  amending"  until  they  had  agreed 
upon  the  whole.  On  June  18,  1779,  they  pre 
sented  the  result  to  the  legislature  in  one  hundred 
and  twenty-six  bills,  "making  a  printed  folio  of 
ninety-two  pages." 

This  elaborate  draft  of  one  hundred  and  twenty- 
six  bills  was  never  acted  on  as  a  whole,  but  "some 
bills,"  as  Jefferson  says  in  his  Memoir,  "were  taken 
out  occasionally  .  .  .  and  passed."  The  interrup 
tion  of  the  work  of  legislative  reform  was  chiefly  due 
to  the  turn  which  the  Revolutionary  War  had  taken. 


66  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

The  British,  defeated  in  their  campaign  for  the  Hud 
son  and  driven  to  extreme  measures  by  the  alliance 
between  America  and  France,  had  transferred  the 
seat  of  war  to  the  Southern  States.  General  Prevost 
seized  Savannah  in  December,  1778,  and  proceeded 
to  the  conquest  of  South  Carolina.  Just  at  the 
moment  that  the  revisers  were  presenting  their  re 
port  to  the  Virginia  Legislature,  General  Lincoln  was 
hastening  to  save  Charleston.  The  Carolinas  and 
Georgia  looked  to  the  rich  and  populous  State  of 
Virginia  to  help  them.  Food,  horses,  ammunition, 
men,  and  guns  were  generously  sent  by  the  legisla 
ture  at  Williamsburg.  Then  came  the  invasion  of 
Virginia  itself,  the  raids  of  Leslie  and  Arnold  herald 
ing  the  campaign  of  Cornwallis,  which  brought  the 
active  hostilities  of  the  Revolution  to  an  end  on  the 
Virginia  peninsula  of  Yorktown.  Inter  arma  silent 
leges.  When  peace  came,  and  the  recovery  from 
the  ravages  of  war,  the  unfinished  business  of  legal 
reform  was  renewed.  Jefferson  was  no  longer  in 
the  legislature,  but  his  faithful  lieutenant,  Madison, 
by  his  "unwearied  exertions "  got  most  of  the  im 
portant  bills  through.  It  happened,  as  with  every 
extensive  plan  of  reform,  that  some  measures  were 
adopted  at  once,  some  were  temporarily  defeated 
only  to  triumph  later  over  conservative  opposition, 
and  some  were  dismissed  finally  into  the  realm  of 
the  Utopian.  The  successful  measures  included  the 
abolition  of  the  slave-trade,  the  laws  for  the  recovery 


REFORM  OF  THE  VIRGINIA  CODE    67 


of  debts,  for  the  organization  of  the  courts,  and  for 
the  reform  of  the  penal  code.  By  the  latter  the 
death  penalty  for  twenty-seven  felonies  was  abol 
ished,  and  by  a  later  addition  (1796)  the  barbarous 
features  of  the  lex  talionis  were  stricken  from  the 
Virginia  code. 

On  the  other  hand,  two  projects  of  reform  which 
Jefferson  cherished  equally  with  religious  emancipa 
tion  and  the  abolition  of  entails  were  doomed  to 
utter  defeat.  Jefferson  was  a  consistent  antislavery 
man.  When  he  entered  the  House  of  Burgesses  in 
1769,  he  tells  us  in  his  Memoir,  his  first  act  was  an 
effort  to  secure  the  passage  of  a  bill  permitting  mas 
ters  to  emancipate  their  slaves  at  will.1  We  have 
seen  how  in  the  original  draft  of  the  Declaration  of 
Independence  he  arraigned  George  III  for  his  part 
in  fixing  slavery  on  the  colony  of  Virginia.  Now 
that  Virginia  was  free  from  royal  control  he  hoped 
his  countrymen  would  abolish  the  evil  entirely.  But 
he  was  doomed  to  disappointment.  The  committee 
on  revision  refused  to  report  a  bill  in  favor  of  eman 
cipation  and  would  only  agree  to  the  form  of  an 
amendment  to  be  offered  to  the  legislature  in  case 
such  a  bill  should  be  taken  up.  This  singular  amend 
ment,  unmistakably  from  Jefferson's  pen,  provided 
that  the  children  born  of  slave  mothers  "should  con- 


1 A  colonial  statute  of  1729  provided  that  no  slave  should  be  set 
free  "on  any  pretence  whatsoever,  except  for  some  meritorious  ser 
vices,  to  be  adjudged  and  allowed  by  the  Governor  and  Council." 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

tinue  with  their  parents  to  a  certain  age,  then  be 
brought  up  at  public  expense,  to  tillage,  arts  or 
sciences,  according  to  their  geniuses,  till  the  females 
should  be  eighteen  and  the  males  twenty-one  years 
of  age";  then  they  should  be  sent  out  in  colonies  to 
some  "proper  place"  [a  West  Indian  island]  fur 
nished  with  arms,  live  stock,  seeds,  tools,  etc.,  by  the 
government,  and  taken  under  the  protection  of  the 
State  until  they  were  strong  enough  to  care  for 
themselves.  This  quixotic  plan  was  never  even  de 
bated.  Writing  nearly  a  half  a  century  later,  under 
the  ominous  peace  of  the  Missouri  Compromise, 
Jefferson  says  of  his  emancipation  plan:  "It  was 
found  that  the  public  mind  would  not  bear  the 
proposition,  nor  will  it  bear  it  even  to  this  day  (1821). 
Yet  the  day  is  not  distant  when  it  must  bear  and 
adopt  it,  or  worse  will  follow.  Nothing  is  more  cer 
tainly  written  in  the  book  of  fate  than  that  these 
people  are  to  be  free." 

Another  project  which  was  dear  to  Jefferson's 
heart,  but  which  the  "public  mind"  of  Virginia 
"would  not  yet  bear,"  was  a  general  system  of  edu 
cation.  The  bills  which  he  prepared  on  this  sub 
ject  at  the  request  of  his  colleagues  on  the  board  of 
revisers  called  for  the  institution  of  primary  and 
secondary  schools  all  over  the  State.  At  the  same 
time  the  College  of  William  and  Mary,  whose  cur 
riculum  was  confined  to  theology,  philosophy,  and 
the  classics,  was  to  be  enlarged  into  a  State  univer- 


REFORM  OF  THE  VIRGINIA  CODE    69 

sity  with  ample  provision  for  history,  modern  lan 
guages,  and  applied  mathematics  and  science.  And 
finally  the  sum  of  two  thousand  pounds  a  year  was 
to  be  set  apart  by  the  legislature  for  the  establish 
ment  and  maintenance  of  a  free  public  library  at 
Richmond. 

The  education  bills  were  not  acted  on  until  1796, 
and  then  "  only  so  much  of  the  first  as  provided  for 
elementary  schools,"  whose  establishment  was  left 
optional  with  the  courts  of  each  county.  Little  was 
done,  naturally,  under  this  system  of  local  option, 
for  public  education  in  Virginia.  The  piedmont 
counties  were  poor,  and  the  large  dissenting  popula 
tion  in  them  was  jealous  of  the  supervision  of  over 
seers  and  visitors  who  were  required  by  law  to  be 
churchmen.  The  tide-water  counties  were  "aris 
tocratic,"  without  any  conviction  of  the  necessity 
or  expediency  of  educating  the  "lower  classes"  be 
yond  their  station.  In  spite  of  the  defeat  of  his 
projects,  however,  Jefferson  never  lost  a  grain  of  his 
faith  in  the  mission  of  education  to  ameliorate  the 
condition  of  the  people  at  large.  Like  the  warning 
against  the  danger  of  perpetuating  negro  slavery, 
this  other  warning  against  the  evils  of  an  uneducated 
populace  runs  through  his  writings.  "If  a  nation 
expects  to  be  ignorant  and  free,  in  a  state  of  civiliza 
tion,"  he  wrote  to  Charles  Yancey  in  1816,  "it  ex 
pects  what  never  was  and  never  will  be." 

After  he  had  done  with  the  cares  of  office  and  re- 


70  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

V— -^ 

turned  to  Monticello  to  spend  the  declining  years  of 
life,  Jefferson  bent  his  best  energies  to  the  creation 
of  a  State  university  which  should  be  a  model  for 
institutions  of  higher  learning  throughout  the  land. 
The  results  of  his  efforts  of  a  half  a  century  in  the 
cause  of  education  were  so  important  both  for  his 
own  State  and  for  the  country  at  large  that  we  shall 
return  to  the  subject  in  a  later  chapter.  Here  we 
simply  record  the  eventual  triumph  of  the  project 
which  failed  so  signally  in  the  meagre  legislation 
which  the  friends  of  education  could  wring  from  the 
Virginia  Legislature  before  the  nineteenth  century. 
Jefferson  thought  of  the  revision  of  the  Virginia 
laws  as  a  contribution  to  a  definite  social  reform  of 
the  State,  especially  in  the  major  bills  on  entail, 
primogeniture,  religious  freedom,  and  public  educa 
tion.  Referring  to  them,  he  says  in  his  Memoir: 
"I  considered  four  of  these  bills,  passed  or  reported, 
as  forming  a  system  by  which  every  fibre  would  be 
eradicated  of  an  antient  or  future  aristocracy,  and  a 
foundation  laid  for  a  government  truly  republican." 
We  have  seen  that  his  program  was  only  imper 
fectly  realized.  It  was  Utopian  in  parts;  it  was 
everywhere  boldly  and  bravely  optimistic.  It  failed 
in  many  of  its  recommendations;  but  its  signifi 
cance  is  not  finally  in  the  success  or  failure  of  this  or 
that  particular  bill.  James  Bryce,  in  his  lecture  on 
"Jefferson  and  the  Constitution,"  says  truly:  "Jef 
ferson's  influence  has  been  on  the  spirit  of  the  people 


REFORM  OF  THE  VIRGINIA  CODE    71 

and  their  attitude  towards  institutions  rather  than 
on  the  formation  of  institutions  themselves."  To 
the  mind  that  finds  it  difficult  to  appreciate  such 
imponderable  influences,  Jefferson  seems  like  a 
dreamer  dwelling  in  a  fool's  paradise  of  optimism  or 
blocking  the  path  of  efficient  government  with  ex 
asperating  political  scruples.  "He  died  as  he  had 
lived,"  says  Oliver,  "in  the  odor  of  phrases."  That 
is  the  way  principles  appear  to  some  minds. 

Jefferson's  work  as  a  reformer  of  the  laws  and  cus 
toms  of  old  Virginia  has  been  far  too  little  noticed 
by  his  biographers.  This  lies  partly,  no  doubt,  in 
the  comparative  indifference  of  the  Northern  schol 
ars  who  have  written  most  of  our  histories  to  the 
development  of  local  institutions  in  the  South.  "If 
Jefferson  had  done  his  [legal]  work  east  of  the  Hud 
son  or  north  of  the  Susquehanna,"  writes  a  member 
of  the  Virginia  bar,  "he  would  be  rated  far  higher 
among  the  greatest  legal  minds  America  has  pro 
duced."  To  my  mind,  however,  the  neglect  of 
Jefferson  as  a  legislator  and  reformer  is  due  far  more 
to  the  overemphasis  of  his  work  as  a  party  organ 
izer  and  politician.  He  is  far  better  known  as  the 
antagonist  of  Hamilton  than  as  the  colleague  of 
Wythe  and  Pendleton.  And  yet,  while  we  may  not 
allow  a  man  to  be  the  final  judge  of  his  own  charac 
ter,  it  is  only  fair  to  respect  his  estimate  of  his  own 
accomplishments,  especially  when  he  makes  that 
estimate  calmly  and  reflectively  at  the  end  of  a 


72  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

long  life.  In  a  pathetic  little  passage  stitched  into 
his  Memoir  on  a  memorandum  leaf,  Jefferson  says: 
"I  have  sometimes  asked  myself  whether  my  coun 
try  is  better  for  my  having  lived  at  all.  I  do  not 
know  that  it  is.  I  have  been  the  instrument  of 
doing  the  following  things — but  they  would  have 
been  done  by  others,  some  of  them,  perhaps,  a  little 
better."  The  things  he  goes  on  to  mention  are  just 
these  reforms  which  we  have  been  studying.  In  a 
list  of  ten  services,  only  one  is  national  and  political 
in  its  nature — the  Declaration  of  Independence. 
The  others  are  reforms — religious,  economic,  penal, 
educational,  agrarian,  fiscal — which  he  accomplished, 
or  strove  to  accomplish,  for  his  "country"  of  Vir 
ginia.  He  does  not  mention  the  Louisiana  Pur 
chase,  but  recalls  with  satisfaction  the  improvement 
of  the  navigation  of  the  Rivanna.  He  omits  the 
triumph  over  the  Federalists  in  the  great  battle  of 
1800,  but  dwells  with  pride  on  the  introduction  into 
Virginia  of  a  better  quality  of  rice  from  Lombardy. 
When  we  remember  that  Virginia  was  the  largest 
and  richest  State  in  the  Union  during  the  first  gen 
eration  of  our  history  under  the  Constitution,  that 
she  furnished  four  out  of  our  firfet  five  Presidents, 
that  her  influence  was  enormous  on  the  States  to 
the  south  of  her  and  considerable  on  the  States  to 
the  north,  we  realize  what  it  meant,  not  for  Virginia 
alone,  but  for  our  whole  country,  that  the  stamp  of 
Thomas  Jefferson's  liberalism  was  put  on  the  insti- 


REFORM  OF  THE  VIRGINIA  CODE    73 

tutions  of  the  Old  Dominion  in  the  critical  years  just 
following  our  independence.  His  was  the  first  law  in 
the  modern  world  sanctioning  expatriation.  His  was 
the  first  law  of  a  slave  state  abolishing  the  slave- 
trade.  His  was  the  first  law  of  modern  times  appor 
tioning  punishment  to  crime  on  a  rational  and  hu 
mane  principle.  His  was  the  first  conception  in  our 
country  of  a  free  university  as  a  "group  of  faculties" 
in  which  the  elective  system  prevailed.  His  was  the 
first  formal  declaration  of  complete  religious  liberty 
by  a  sovereign  state  in  the  history  of  the  world. 
For  half  a  century  the  influence  of  his  work  for  Vir 
ginia  was  spread  abroad — his  educational  ideas  to 
Michigan,  Missouri,  Massachusetts,  Maine,  and 
Kentucky;  his  antislavery  principles  to  the  North 
west  Territory;  his  elective  system  to  Harvard;  his 
liberal  ideas  of  citizenship  to  the  nation.  New  York 
followed  Virginia's  lead  in  the  abolition  of  entails 
in  1782,  North  Carolina  in  1784,  Kentucky  in  1796, 
New  Jersey  in  1820.  Far  down  into  the  nineteenth 
century  broad-minded  men  in  every  State  were 
drawing  on  Jefferson's  arguments,  citing  his  letters, 
quoting  the  forceful  passages  of  his  Notes  on  Virginia, 
and  the  preamble  to  his  bill  for  religious  freedom, 
until  all  over  our  republic  there  was  vindicated  the 
simple  but  hard-won  truth  that  "the  opinions  of 
men  are  not  the  object  of  civil  government  nor 
under  its  jurisdiction." 
As  a  politician  Jefferson  appears  to  some  as  crafty 


74  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

and  oversubtle.  Others  regard  him  as  a  feeble  and 
counsel-reft  executive.  His  fundamental  political 
principle  of  trust  in  a  people  trained  to  mistrust  its 
governors  seems  to  many  open  to  grave  objections 
on  the  grounds  of  both  policy  and  wisdom.  But 
as  a  liberalizing  and  liberating  influence  on  the 
spirit  of  the  American  people  he  stands  without  a 
peer  until  the  advent  of  Abraham  Lincoln.  Napo 
leon  Bonaparte  said:  "I  shall  go  down  to  posterity 
with  the  Code  in  my  hand."  How  much  more 
finely  could  Jefferson  say  this !  For  the  code  of 
Napoleon  was  order,  but  the  code  of  Thomas  Jeffer 
son  was  order  and  liberty. 


CHAPTER  IV 
JEFFERSON  AS  WAR  GOVERNOR 

We  consider  ourselves  bound  in  honor,  as  well  as  interest,  to  share 
one  general  fate  with  our  sister  colonies;  and  we  should  hold  ourselves 
base  deserters  of  that  union  to  which  we  have  acceded,  were  we  to  agree 
on  any  measures  distinct  and  apart  from  them.  (Address  from  Vir 
ginia  Burgesses  to  Governor  Dunmore,  June  12,  1775.) 

A  FEW  days  before  the  committee  of  revisers 
made  their  report  to  the  legislature,  Jefferson  was 
chosen  governor  of  Virginia  to  succeed  Patrick 
Henry,  who  had  served  for  three  consecutive  an 
nual  terms  since  the  State  became  a  free  republic. 
Jefferson  occupied  the  office  for  two  years,  from 
June,  1779,  to  June,  1781 — two  years  which,  with 
the  possible  exception  of  the  closing  years  of  his 
presidency,  were  the  most  irksome  period  of  his 
whole  public  life.  In  his  Memoir,  after  devoting 
twenty  pages  to  the  work  of  the  law  revision,  he 
passes  over  the  governorship  in  silence,  alleging  as 
his  reason  that  to  write  his  own  history  during  those 
two  years  would  be  but  to  duplicate  the  histories 
of  the  State  already  written.  But  we  may  suspect 
that  it  was  more  than  a  scruple  against  furnishing 
a  redundancy  of  historical  material  that  made  Jef 
ferson  so  reticent  during  his  whole  life  on  the  sub- 

75 


76  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

ject  of  his  gubernatorial  office.  His  sensitive  nature 
shrank  from  controversy.  Accused  of  timidity, 
vacillation,  incapacity,  and  even  personal  cowardice 
in  his  high  office,  he  made  a  dignified  defense  before 
the  legislature,  which  won  a  unanimous  vote  of  con 
fidence  in  his  "ability,  rectitude  and  integrity  as 
chief  magistrate  of  the  Commonwealth,"  and  left 
further  vindication  of  his  behavior  to  his  friendly 
biographers.  The  task  has  been  performed  with 
pious  and  laborious  devotion  by  Mr.  Randall,  who, 
in  over  a  hundred  and  twenty  large  octavo  pages, 
sifts  every  ugly  charge,  and  succeeds,  even  in  the 
opinion  of  the  acrid  Morse,  in  "establishing  a 
satisfactory  defense"  of  his  hero,  albeit  the  facts 
and  arguments  have  to  be  "rescued  dripping  from 
a  sea  of  rhetoric  and  fine  writing." 

The  year  1779  was  ominous  for  the  States  south 
of  the  Potomac.  Defeated  in  their  endeavor  to 
occupy  the  Hudson-Champlain  line  of  communica 
tion  with  Canada,  exasperated  by  the  consequent 
alliance  of  the  French  King  with  the  rebellious 
Americans,  forced  to  evacuate  the  "capital"  of 
Philadelphia  for  want  of  proper  defenses  in  Delaware 
Bay  against  the  appearance  of  a  French  fleet,  the 
British  had  decided  to  transfer  their  military  opera 
tions  to  the  south  and  to  prosecute  them  with  a 
ruthlessness  which  contrasted  strangely  with  the 
dilatory  and  urbane  assaults  of  Howe,  Burgoyne, 
and  Clinton.  "The  whole  contest  is  changed,"  ran 


JEFFERSON  AS  WAR  GOVERNOR      77 

the  proclamation  issued  by  the  English  commission 
ers  in  October,  1778;  "the  policy  as  well  as  the 
benevolence  of  Great  Britain  has  thus  far  checked 
the  extremes  of  war,  where  they  tended  to  distress 
a  people  still  considered  as  our  fellow-subjects,  and 
to  desolate  a  country  shortly  to  become  a  source  of 
mutual  advantage.  But  when  that  country  pro 
fesses  the  unnatural  design  of  mortgaging  herself  to 
our  enemies  .  .  .  the  question  is  how  far  Great 
Britain  by  every  means  in  her  power  may  destroy  or 
render  useless  a  connection  contrived  for  her  ruin 
and  for  the  aggrandizement  of  France."  Thus  the 
policy  of  "frightfulness"  was  announced. 

Savannah  was  taken  by  the  British  in  December, 
1778,  and  the  entire  defenseless  State  of  Georgia 
thereby  put  at  the  mercy  of  the  invader.  The 
British  moved  on  to  Charleston  from  the  south, 
while  General  Clinton  detached  two  thousand  men 
from  his  army  in  New  Jersey  to  ravage  the  coast 
of  Virginia.  It  was  under  the  shadow  of  these  ca 
lamities  that  Jefferson  took  the  oath  as  governor 
of  Virginia. 

The  condition  of  the  State  was  precarious.  Broad 
rivers  running  through  the  flat  lands  of  the  tide 
water  emptied  along  an  extensive  coast  line  in 
Chesapeake  Bay,  and  offered  the  opportunity  for 
vessels  of  several  hundred  tons  to  ascend  far  into 
the  interior  of  the  State.  There  were  no  mountain 
fastnesses,  caves,  and  lairs  to  offer  a  small  guerilla 


78  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

force  the  protection  whence  they  could  sally  forth 
to  harass  large  numbers  of  invaders.  The  State 
had  but  four  vessels  of  war.  Its  militia  of  fifty 
thousand  men,  an  average  of  one  man  to  the  square 
mile,  was  scattered  and  ill-equipped.  Jefferson 
doubted  if  there  were  more  than  one  gun  to  every 
four  or  five  soldiers.  The  immense  region  stretch 
ing  like  an  opening  wedge  westward  to  the  Missis 
sippi  and  northward  to  Lake  Superior  was  still  a 
part  of  Virginia  according  to  the  interpretation  of 
the  royal  charter  of  1609,  and  its  defense  against 
the  Indians  incited  by  the  British  commander  at 
Detroit  was  a  heavy  drain  on  the  resources  of  the 
State. 

To  place  the  Virginia  coast  in  a  state  of  defense 
against  raids  while  the  British  held  control  of  the 
seas  was  a  task  which  ten  times  the  resources  of  the 
State  in  men  and  money  would  not  have  been  able 
to  accomplish.  Nor  was  it  expected.  The  British 
landed  where  they  would,  from  Boston  to  Savannah. 
All  that  could  be  done  was  to  check  their  progress 
inland  and  to  prevent  the  junction  of  their  forces. 
The  military  genius  of  Washington  himself,  with 
the  continental  army  at  his  back,  could  do  no  more; 
and  he  knew  that  the  civilian  governor  of  a  State, 
with  a  scanty  militia  to  rely  on,  must  perforce  do 
even  less.  All  his  correspondence  with  Jefferson 
during  the  war  shows  that  he  accepted  this  inevi 
table  menace  of  invasion  with  equanimity,  or  at 


JEFFERSON  AS  WAR  GOVERNOR      79 

least  with  resignation.  He  only  suggested  that 
Jefferson  might  do  something  for  the  defense  of 
the  State  in  constructing  boats  to  prevent  the 
enemy  "from  being  able  to  move  up  and  down  the 
rivers  in  small  parties." 

But  even  if  Jefferson  had  had  the  whole  body  of 
the  militia  of  Virginia  at  his  disposal  on  the  lower 
James,  these  troops  could  not  have  been  employed, 
consistently  with  the  policy  of  the  American  strat 
egy,  in  defending  Virginia.  The  common  cause  de 
manded  the  application  of  such  forces  as  the  States 
could  muster  to  the  points  of  common  danger.  The 
descent  of  a  British  raiding-party  on  Portsmouth  or 
Suffolk  or  Richmond  was  a  slight  calamity  as  com 
pared  with  the  total  subjugation  of  the  Carolinas 
by  Cornwallis  and  his  "hunting  leopard/'  Tarleton. 
For  the  loss  of  the  Carolinas  meant  the  invasion  of 
Virginia  in  force.  The  Old  Dominion  fought  best 
for  her  own  life  out  beyond  her  borders.  "The 
evils  you  have  to  apprehend  from  these  predatory 
excursions,"  wrote  Washington  to  Jefferson  after  the 
severe  raid  of  1781,  "are  not  to  be  compared  to  the 
injury  to  the  common  cause  and  with  the  danger 
to  your  own  state  in  particular,  from  the  conquest 
of  the  states  to  the  southward  of  you.  I  am  per 
suaded  that  the  attention  to  your  immediate  safety 
will  not  divert  you  from  the  measures  intended  to 
reinforce  the  southern  army."  Washington  was 
even  convinced  that  the  raid  on  Virginia  was  only 


80  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

intended  as  a  diversion  to  relieve  Cornwallis  by  the 
withdrawal  of  Virginia  troops  from  Greene's  army 
in  the  South.  According  to  the  commander-in-chief 
of  the  American  army,  then,  Virginia's  first  duty 
was  to  pour  her  aid  into  the  Carolinas  and  "keep 
the  weight  of  war  at  a  distance  from  her." 

This  duty  Virginia  performed  nobly.  From  her 
stores  of  grain,  vegetables,  pork,  wagons,  horses, 
and  men  she  contributed  liberally.  When  Charles 
ton  capitulated  to  the  British  in  May,  1780,  the 
Virginia  Legislature  sent  seven  hundred  militiamen 
to  strengthen  the  regular  army,  established  muni 
tion  works  and  public  stores,  and  authorized  im 
pressments  of  foodstuffs  and  military  supplies. 
Jefferson's  own  horses  and  wagons  were  among  the 
first  taken.  The  ill-starred  Gates  assumed  com 
mand  of  the  Southern  army  in  the  summer  of  1780. 
From  his  appearance  in  Richmond  early  in  July  to 
his  disastrous  defeat  at  Camden  on  the  16th  of 
August,  he  received  noble  support  from  Virginia. 
On  August  4  Jefferson  wrote  him  that  cartridge- 
boxes,  bayonet-belts,  axes,  beef,  ammunition,  and 
arms  were  being  forwarded  to  his  troops.  After 
the  disaster  of  the  16th  (a  disaster  which  was  pre 
cipitated  by  the  panic  of  the  raw  militia  from  Vir 
ginia)  Jefferson,  though  "extremely  mortified"  by 
the  conduct  of  the  troops,  only  made  the  more 
strenuous  efforts  to  repair  the  evil.  "Instead  of 
considering  what  is  past,"  he  wrote  to  the  com- 


JEFFERSON  AS  WAR  GOVERNOR      81 

mander  of  the  Virginian  troops  in  Gates's  army, 
"we  are  to  look  forward  and  prepare  for  the  future." 
To  Gates  himself  he  wrote,  promising  more  (and 
let  us  hope  better)  men,  "three  thousand  stand  of 
arms,  and  military  stores."  "Our  treasury  is 
utterly  exhausted,"  he  adds,  "and  cannot  be  re 
plenished  until  the  assembly  meets  in  October.  We 
might,  however,  furnish  considerable  quantities  of 
provisions,  were  it  possible  to  convey  it  to  you. 
We  shall  immediately  send  an  agent  into  the  south 
ern  counties  to  collect  and  forward  all  he  can."  "It 
could  not  be  expected,"  he  generously  wrote  to 
Madison  in  the  midsummer  of  1780,  "that  North 
Carolina,  which  contains  but  one  tenth  of  the 
American  militia,  should  be  left  to  support  the 
Southern  War  alone." 

So  Virginia  sent  off  her  men  and  supplies  to  stay 
the  tide  of  invasion  rolling  up  from  the  south,  well 
knowing  to  what  peril  she  was  exposing  herself  in 
case  the  invasion  could  not  be  checked. 

Ten  thousand  Virginia  troops,  including  regulars 
and  militia,  were  in  the  armies  north  and  south  of 
the  State.  As  the  year  1780  drew  to  a  close  the 
mind  of  the  governor  was  fixed,  where  the  com- 
mander-in-chief  had  urged  him  to  fix  it,  on  the  war 
beyond  his  borders.  Jefferson  wrote  on  Christmas 
eve  to  the  lieutenants  of  the  counties  of  Hampshire 
and  Berkeley:  "A  powerful  army  forming  by  our 
enemies  in  the  south,  and  an  extensive  combination 


82  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

of  savages  in  the  west,  will  probably  render  the  en 
suing  campaign  exceedingly  active,  and  particularly 
call  forth  the  exertions  of  this  state.  It  is  our  duty 
to  look  forward  in  time  and  to  make  proper  division 
of  our  force  between  these  two  objects." 

It  was  under  these  trying  circumstances  that  the 
blow  of  invasion  fell  on  Virginia.  Some  eighteen 
hundred  men  in  twenty-seven  ships  commanded  by 
the  traitor  Benedict  Arnold  appeared  suddenly  in 
Chesapeake  Bay.  We  can  do  no  better  than  to 
transcribe  a  few  sentences  on  the  event  from  Jeffer 
son's  own  diary: 

Saturday,  Dec.  30,  1780.  Eight  o'clock  a.m.  Re 
ceived  first  intelligence  that  twenty-seven  sail  were,  on 
the  morning  of  Dec.  29,  just  below  Willoughby's  Point. 
Sent  General  Nelson  with  full  powers. 

Jan.  1,  1781.     No  intelligence. 

Jan.  2d,  ten  o'clock  a.m.  Information  from  N.  Burwell 
that  their  advance  was  at  Warrasqueak  Bay.  Gave  or 
ders  for  militia,  a  quarter  from  some,  a  half  from  other 
counties.  Assembly  rose. 

.  .  .  Thursday,  Jan.  4th,  five  o'clock  a.m.  Called 
whole  militia  from  adjacent  counties.  I  was  then  anxious 
to  know  whether  they  would  pass  Westover  or  not,  as 
that  would  show  the  side  they  would  land.  .  .  .  Five 
o'clock  p.m.  Learned  by  Capt.  De  Ponthere  that  at 
2  o'clock  p.m.  they  were  drawn  up  at  Westover.  Then 
ordered  arms,  stores  etc.  to  be  thrown  across  the  river  at 
Richmond;  and  at  half-past  seven  o'clock  p.m.  set  out  to 
the  foundry  and  Westham  ...  to  see  everything  wag 
goned  from  the  magazine  and  laboratory  to  Westham  and 


JEFFERSON  AS  WAR  GOVERNOR      83 

there  thrown  over  [the  river]  to  work  all  night.  The 
enemy  encamped  at  Four-Mile  Creek. 

Jan.  5.  ...  Went  myself  to  Westham;  gave  orders 
for  withdrawing  ammunition  and  arms  (which  lay  ex 
posed  on  the  bank  to  the  effect  of  artillery  from  the  oppo 
site  shore)  behind  a  point.  Then  went  to  Manchester. 
Had  a  view  of  the  enemy.  My  horse  sank  under  me  with 
fatigue.  Borrowed  one,  went  to  Chetwoods,  appointed 
by  Baron  Steuben  as  a  rendezvous  and  head-quarters.  .  .  . 
The  enemy  arrived  at  Richmond  at  one  o'clock  p.m. 
One  regiment  of  infantry  and  thirty  horse  proceeded  with 
out  stopping  to  the  foundry,  burned  that  and  the  maga 
zine.  .  .  .  They  returned  that  evening  to  Richmond. 
Sent  me  a  proposition  to  compound  for  property.  Re 
fused. 

Jan.  6.  In  the  morning  they  burned  certain  houses  and 
stores,  and  at  12  o'clock  that  day  left  Richmond. 

Jan.  7.  Rained  excessively  the  preceding  night  and 
continued  to  do  so  till  about  noon.  Gibson  has  one 
thousand  [militia],  Steuben  eight  hundred,  Davis  two 
hundred,  Nelson  two  hundred  and  fifty.  .  .  . 

Jan.  9.  The  enemy  remain  in  their  last  encampment, 
except  embarking  their  horse. 

Jan.  10.  At  one  o'clock  p.m.  They  embark  infantry 
and  fall  down  the  river. 

Jefferson  has  received  unmerciful  censure  for  per 
mitting  this  raid  of  Arnold's.  Henry  Lee  ("  Legion 
Harry")  in  his  Memoir  of  the  War  in  the  Southern 
Department  of  the  United  States,  declared  that  Vir 
ginia  was  not  defended  in  1781  because  her  public 
spirit  was  paralyzed  by  the  "timidity  and  impotence 
of  her  rulers/ '  and  that  a  soldier  of  genius  could 


84  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

have  preserved  the  State  from  insults  and  injuries 
"with  300  horse,  300  musketry,  and  a  battalion  of 
infantry."  John  Marshall,  in  his  Life  of  Washing 
ton,  upbraided  Jefferson  for  neglect  of  warning:  "So 
early  as  the  9th  of  December,  1780,  a  letter  from 
Gen'l  Washington  announced  to  the  Governor  [Jef 
ferson]  that  a  large  embarkation,  supposed  to  be 
destined  for  the  South,  was  about  taking  place  at 
New  York."  And,  following  the  lead  of  Lee  and 
Marshall,  modern  historians  have  characterized 
Jefferson's  behavior  as  "culpably  remiss,"  "weak 
and  vacillating,"  and  "stupid."  J.  T.  Morse  even 
dismisses  Jefferson's  desperate  efforts  during  four 
days  to  collect  militia  and  save  stores  and  lives  with 
the  sneering  remark  that  "the  enemy  cared  little 
for  all  his  prancing  to  and  fro  on  blooded  steed  or 
raw  colt." 

Jefferson  was  certainly  not  a  "soldier  of  genius/' 
but  that  he  did  all  in  his  power  to  raise  a  defensive 
force  of  militia  in  the  sorely  drained  State,  as  soon 
as  he  knew  that  the  British  ships  were  in  the  Chesa 
peake,  no  one  who  reads  his  letters  to  General  Nel 
son  or  Baron  Steuben  or  the  county  lieutenants  can 
doubt:  "That  there  may  not  be  an  instant's  delay, 
let  them  come  in  detached  parties,  as  they  can  be 
collected:  every  man  who  has  arms  bring  them." 
The  legislature  adjourned  January  2,  in  spite  of  his 
message  to  them  the  day  before  asking  their  advice. 
The  members  of  the  council  went  to  their  homes. 


JEFFERSON  AS  WAR  GOVERNOR      85 

Jefferson  was  left  alone  to  cope  with  the  situation. 
He  spent  over  eighty  hours  in  the  saddle  ("prancing 
to  and  fro"),  directing  measures  of  safety  which 
were  wise  and  necessary.  The  militia,  dispersed 
over  a  large  tract  of  country,  with  wretched  equip 
ment  and  inadequate  means  of  transportation,  came 
in  but  slowly.  Jefferson  wrote  to  the  president  of 
Congress  later  that  on  the  day  the  enemy  reached 
Richmond  uonly  200  [militiaj  were  embodied.  They 
were  of  this  town  and  too  few  to  do  anything."  As 
the  militia  increased  the  enemy  withdrew.  "To 
what  place  they  will  point  their  next  exertions  we 
cannot  conjecture/7  wrote  Jefferson  to  Congress: 
"The  whole  country  on  the  tide-waters  and  some 
distance  from  them  is  equally  open  to  similar  in 
sult." 

As  to  the  "warning"  Jefferson  received  from 
Washington,  it  was  only  a  general  circular  letter 
sent  to  the  various  executives,  and  not  at  all,  as 
Marshall's  language  implies,  a  special  message  to 
Jefferson  that  Virginia  was  about  to  be  attacked. 
In  fact,  Washington  had  no  idea  what  the  destina 
tion  of  the  rumored  "embarkation"  was.  He  wrote 
Baron  Steuben  on  December  10:  "It  is  reported 
from  New  York  that  the  enemy  are  about  to  make 
another  detachment  .  .  .  their  destination  conjec 
tured  to  be  southward."  Certainly  not  a  very  ur 
gent  warning  to  the  man  who  commanded  the  mili 
tary  forces  of  the  State,  under  the  governor,  and 


86  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

who  was  responsible  for  such  defense  as  it  could  of 
fer  in  case  of  invasion. 

But  the  final  justification  of  Jefferson 's  conduct  is 
in  the  approbation  of  the  commander-in-chief  him 
self.  Washington  was  not  slow  to  discover  and  re 
buke  the  slightest  dereliction  of  duty.  His  wrath 
fell  like  a  thunderbolt  on  everything  that  he  con 
sidered  cowardice  or  "  culpable  remissness."  Yet  he 
wrote  Jefferson  a  few  weeks  after  Arnold's  invasion 
as  follows:  "It  is  mortifying  to  see  so  inconsiderable 
a  party  committing  such  extensive  depradations 
with  impunity,  but  considering  the  situation  of 
your  State,  it  is  a  matter  of  wonder  that  you  have 
hitherto  suffered  so  little  molestation.  I  am  appre 
hensive  you  will  experience  more  in  the  future;  nor 
should  I  be  surprised  if  the  enemy  were  to  establish 
a  post  in  Virginia  till  the  season  for  opening  the 
campaign  here.  But  as  the  evils  you  have  to  ap 
prehend  from  these  predatory  excursions  are  not  to 
be  compared  to  the  common  cause  from  the  con 
quest  of  the  States  to  the  southward  of  you,  I  am 
persuaded  the  attention  to  your  immediate  safety 
will  not  divert  you  from  the  measures  intended  to 
stop  the  progress  of  the  enemy  in  that  quarter. 
The  late  accession  of  force  makes  them  too  power 
ful  to  be  resisted  without  powerful  succors  from 
Virginia,  and  it  is  certainly  her  policy,  as  well  as 
the  interest  of  America,  to  keep  the  weight  of  war 
at  a  distance  from  her.  There  is  no  doubt  that  a 


JEFFERSON  AS  WAR  GOVERNOR      87 

principal  object  of  Arnold's  operations  is  to  make 
a  diversion  in  favor  of  Cornwallis,  and  to  remove 
this  motive  by  disappointing  the  intention  will  be 
one  of  the  surest  ways  of  removing  the  enemy." 
A  few  days  later,  in  a  letter  to  Baron  Steuben, 
Washington  acknowledged  that  the  evil  which  Vir 
ginia  had  suffered  was  a  natural  result  of  the  sub 
stantial  aid  which  the  State  was  furnishing  to  Gen 
eral  Greene  in  the  South,  and  begged  that  Steuben 
would  do  everything  in  his  power  "to  make  the 
defence  of  the  State  interfere  as  little  as  possible 
with  an  object  of  so  much  the  more  importance  as 
the  danger  is  so  much  the  greater."  Washington 
was  a  son  of  Virginia,  too. 

Whether  Greene  would  have  been  able  after  Guil- 
ford  Court  House  to  keep  the  whole  South  from 
submission  to  Cornwallis  without  the  aid  sent  by 
Virginia  is  doubtful.  The  "northern  bretheren" 
did  not  help.  In  fact  the  armies  of  North  and 
South  had  little  common  direction.  Washington, 
intent  to  the  last  on  driving  the  British  from  New 
York,  had  to  leave  the  Southern  commanders  to 
get  on  as  best  they  could,  and  very  often  had  only 
the  most  scanty  and  belated  news  of  their  fortunes. 
Both  Gates  and  Greene  looked  to  Virginia  rather 
than  to  New  York  for  help.  Both  corresponded 
freely  with  Jefferson,  begging  for  men  and  supplies. 
Seven  hundred  Virginia  militiamen  joined  Greene's 
little  army  before  the  battle  at  the  Cowpens  (Janu- 


88  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

ary  17,  1781),  and  a  thousand  more  the  next  month. 
Six  hundred  stand  of  arms  went  through  Richmond 
for  Greene  on  February  22,  followed  by  lead,  car 
tridges,  bread,  and  blankets.  Greene,  though  some 
times  nervously  importunate  in  his  demands  on 
Jefferson,  wrote  to  Washington  of  his  great  gratitude 
for  the  aid  from  the  protecting  State  of  the  South. 
Cornwallis  himself  confessed  to  his  superior,  Clin 
ton,  that  his  "hold  on  the  Carolinas  must  be  diffi 
cult  if  not  precarious  until  Virginia  is  in  a  manner 
subdued."  When,  therefore,  the  British  commander 
left  Greene  in  the  Carolinas  and  struck  north  into 
Virginia  to  put  an  end  to  the  chief  source  of  Greene's 
supplies,  he  found  a  State  crippled  in  the  defense 
of  its  neighbors.  "An  enemy  3000  strong,"  wrote 
Jefferson  to  Congress,  "not  a  regular  in  the  State, 
nor  arms  to  put  into  the  hands  of  the  militia,  are 
indeed  discouraging  circumstances." 

As  the  spring  of  1781  advanced  it  became  evident 
that  the  issue  was  to  be  fought  out  on  the  soil  of 
Virginia.  With  reinforcements  from  Clinton's  army 
in  the  North,  Cornwallis  had  about  seven  thousand 
infantry  and  cavalry  in  the  State  by  the  end  of  May, 
while  his  privateers,  besides  ravaging  the  shores, 
were  effectively  preventing  the  co-operation  of  the 
militia  in  the  counties  lying  on  the  navigable  rivers. 
Washington  had  detached  Lafayette  from  the 
Northern  army  early  in  April,  but  rather  to  support 
the  Southern  States  in  general  than  to  defend  Vir- 


JEFFERSON  AS  WAR  GOVERNOR      89 

ginia  in  particular.  In  fact,  Lafayette  was  to  "  ad 
vise  Governor  Jefferson"  of  his  intended  march 
through  the  State  of  Virginia  to  reinforce  Greene's 
army.  But  when  Lafayette  reached  Virginia  he 
found  the  enemy  there.  The  summer's  campaign, 
conducted  at  first  by  Lafayette  and  Steuben,  and 
finally  drawing  in  Washington,  Rochambeau,  and 
the  French  fleet  for  the  denouement  at  Yorktown, 
we  shall  not  describe.  Before  it  had  proceeded 
many  days  Jefferson's  term  of  office  came  to  a 
close,  and  we  might  let  it  come  to  a  close  in  silence, 
if  it  were  not  that  accusations  of  remissness  and 
cowardice  pursued  him  to  the  end. 

Morse  says  that  when  Cornwallis  reached  Peters 
burg  "Jefferson  could  devise  nothing  better  than  to 
implore  Washington  to  hasten  to  Virginia's  rescue." 
This  is  what  Jefferson  actually  wrote  to  Washington 
over  a  week  after  Cornwallis  reached  Petersburg: 
"The  whole  force  of  the  enemy  within  this  State, 
from  the  best  intelligence  I  have  been  able  to  get,  is 
I  think  about  7000  men,  infantry  and  cavalry.  .  .  . 
Your  Excellency  will  judge,  from  what  you  know  of 
our  country,  what  it  may  probably  suffer  during 
the  present  campaign.  .  .  .  Were  it  possible  for 
this  circumstance  to  justify  in  your  Excellency  a 
determination  to  lend  us  your  personal  aid,  it  is 
evident  from  the  universal  voice,  that  the  presence 
of  their  beloved  countrymen  .  .  .  would  restore 
full  confidence  of  salvation  and  would  render  them 


90  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

equal  to  whatever  is  not  impossible.  I  cannot  un 
dertake  to  foresee  and  obviate  the  difficulties  which 
lie  in  the  way  of  such  a  resolution.  The  whole  sub 
ject  is  before  you,  of  which  I  see  only  detached 
parts,  and  your  judgment  will  be  formed  on  the 
view  of  the  whole.  ...  I  have  undertaken  to  hint 
this  matter  to  your  Excellency  not  only  on  my  own 
sense  of  its  importance  to  us,  but  at  the  solicitation 
of  many  members  of  weight  in  our  Legislature." 
This  is  what  Morse,  with  characteristic  misrepre 
sentation  of  Jefferson's  spirit,  calls  "imploring" 
Washington  to  come  to  Virginia's  rescue. 

At  the  close  of  the  letter  just  quoted  Jefferson 
expressed  his  gratification  in  the  rapid  approach  of 
the  day  which  should  end  his  term  of  office  as  gov 
ernor.  Though  eligible  for  a  third  term,  he  had  re 
solved  to  retire  to  private  life,  believing  that  "under 
the  pressure  of  the  invasion  under  which  we  were 
then  laboring  the  public  would  have  more  confidence 
in  a  military  chief."  However,  when  the  day  for 
Jefferson's  retirement  arrived  (June  2)  no  successor 
had  been  chosen.  Cornwallis's  advance  into  Vir 
ginia  had  thrown  the  legislature  into  a  kind  of 
panic.  They  adjourned  when  he  approached  Rich 
mond  (May  10),  and  twice  again  within  the  month. 
They  sought  refuge  in  Charlottesville,  and  when 
Tarleton's  raid  drove  them  out  of  there,  they  fled 
to  Staunton,  west  of  the  Blue  Ridge.  Again  the 
report  of  Tarleton's  approach  precipitated  a  panic 


JEFFERSON  AS  WAR  GOVERNOR      91 

(June  10),  and  the  legislature,  after  passing  a  reso 
lution  that  the  speaker  might  call  a  meeting  when 
and  where  he  pleased,  again  broke  up  and  dispersed. 
Many  were  in  favor  of  appointing  Patrick  Henry 
dictator  in  the  crisis.  Jefferson,  who  characterized 
the  move  as  "treason  against  the  people/'  says  that 
the  proposition  "  wanted  a  few  votes  only  of  being 
passed."  During  all  this  excitement  Jefferson  con 
tinued  to  perform  the  duties  of  governor  in  a  kind 
of  unofficial  interregnum.  When  the  agitation  over 
the  dictatorship  calmed  down  and  the  legislature 
regained  its  poise,  he  surrendered  the  reins  of  gov 
ernment  into  the  hands  of  his  successor,  General 
Thomas  Nelson.1 

It  was,  strictly  speaking,  therefore,  as  a  private 
citizen  that  Jefferson  suffered  the  indignity  of  being 
driven  from  his  house  at  Monticello  by  Tarleton's 
troopers,  and  of  having  his  neighboring  plantation 
of  Elk  Hill  visited  with  all  the  fury  of  war's  desola 
tion  and  insolence.  In  the  early  morning  of  June  4, 
1781,  a  messenger  brought  Jefferson  word  at  Monti- 
cello  that  Tarleton's  men  were  on  the  way  to  Char 
lottes  ville,  where  the  legislature  was  in  session. 
Several  members  of  the  legislature,  including  the 
speakers  of  both  Houses,  were  Jefferson's  guests  at 

1  General  Nelson  was  one  of  the  wealthiest  and  bravest  of  Vir 
ginia's  sons.  His  old  family  mansion  was  within  the  British  lines 
at  Yorktown,  and  actually  occupied  by  British  officers.  During  the 
siege  Washington  wished  to  spare  the  house  from  bombardment, 
but  Nelson  proudly  refused  the  favor. 


92  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

the  time.  After  breakfast  they  went  down  to  Char- 
lottesville,  where  the  assembly  met  and  hastily  ad 
journed,  while  Jefferson  sent  his  wife  and  children  to 
the  home  of  Colonel  Coles,  some  fifteen  miles  away, 
and  busied  himself  securing  his  most  important  pa 
pers.  He  ordered  his  groom  to  have  his  horse  ready 
at  a  point  on  the  road  to  Carter's  Mountain,  but 
seeing  no  signs  of  the  British  in  the  streets  of  Char- 
lottesville  when  he  went  out  to  reconnoitre  with  his 
telescope,  he  started  back  to  the  house  to  put  a  few 
last  papers  in  order.  By  a  lucky  chance  he  discov 
ered  that  he  had  lost  his  light  "walking  sword" 
from  its  sheath  when  he  kneeled  down  to  level  his 
telescope;  for  on  his  return  to  the  spot  to  pick  it  up 
he  looked  again  in  the  direction  of  Charlottesville 
and  saw  the  streets  filled  with  Tarleton's  dragoons. 
Jefferson  then  sprang  on  his  horse  and  rode  away 
to  safety.  Had  he  gone  back  to  the  house,  as  he 
intended,  he  would  have  fallen  directly  into  the 
hands  of  Captain  McLeod,  whom  Tarleton  had  sent 
ahead  "to  seize  Mr.  Jefferson  and  occupy  Monti- 
cello  as  a  look-out."  McLeod  was  actually  in  pos 
session  of  the  house  when  Jefferson  turned  back, 
and  he  remained  there  for  eighteen  hours,  depart 
ing,  be  it  said  to  his  credit,  without  injury  to  prop 
erty  or  persons. 

Far  different,  however,  was  Tarleton's  behavior 
at  Jefferson's  plantation  of  Elk  Hill,  which  he  passed 
on  his  way  down  the  James  to  rejoin  Cornwallis. 


JEFFERSON  AS  WAR  GOVERNOR      93 

Jefferson  gives  a  heartrending  description  of  Tarle- 
ton's  wanton  cruelty  in  a  letter  written  to  Doctor 
Gordon  seven  years  later:  "He  remained  ten  days. 
...  He  destroyed  all  my  growing  crops  of  corn 
and  tobacco;  he  burned  all  my  barns  .  .  .  having 
first  taken  what  corn  he  wanted.  He  used,  as  was 
to  be  expected,  all  my  stock  of  cattle,  sheep,  and 
hogs  for  the  sustenance  of  his  army,  and  carried  off 
all  the  horses  capable  of  service;  of  those  too  young 
for  service  he  cut  the  throats.  He  burned  all  the 
fences  on  the  plantation  so  as  to  leave  it  an  utter 
wreck.  He  carried  off,  also,  about  thirty  slaves. 
Had  this  been  to  give  them  freedom  he  would  have 
done  right;  but  it  was  to  consign  them  to  inevitable 
death  from  smallpox  and  putrid  fever  then  raging  in 
his  camp.  He  treated  the  rest  of  the  neighborhood 
in  somewhat  the  same  style,  but  not  with  the  spirit 
of  total  extermination  with  which  he  seemed  to  rage 
over  my  possessions.  .  .  .  History  will  never  re 
late  the  horrors  committed  by  the  British  army  in 
the  Southern  States  of  America.  They  raged  in 
Virginia  six  months  only  .  .  .  and  I  give  you  a 
faithful  specimen  of  their  transactions  for  ten  days 
of  that  time,  and  on  one  spot  only.  Ex  pede  Hercu- 
lem.  I  suppose  their  whole  devastations  during 
those  six  months  amounted  to  about  £3,000,000 
sterling." 

Jefferson's    narrow    and    fortunate    escape   from 
seizure  by  McLeod's  troops  at  Monticello  has  been 


94  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

called  by  unfavorable  biographers  "  running  away 
from  the  British/ '  and  the  impression  has  been 
created  in  thousands  of  minds  that  it  was  cowardice 
and  not  prudence  that  dictated  his  behavior.  Yet 
the  mere  statement  of  the  facts  shows  how  inevita 
ble  was  the  course  which  Jefferson  took.  Every  one 
of  his  critics  would  have  done  the  same  thing  in  the 
same  predicament.  If  anything,  he  was  rashly 
courageous  in  staying  too  long  in  an  exposed  and 
defenseless  position.  In  the  panic  which  seized  the 
State  on  Cornwallis's  invasion,  there  was  the  usual 
nervous  campaign  of  incrimination,  the  usual  hunt 
for  a  political  victim.  Men  began  to  blame  the 
governor  for  his  generosity.  If  he  had  kept  the 
arms  and  soldiers  in  the  State  instead  of  sending 
them  to  reinforce  Washington  in  the  North  and 
Greene  in  the  South,  Virginia  would  not  now  be 
lying  prostrate  under  Tarleton's  iron  heel.  If  he 
had  only  spent  the  money  to  fortify  the  coast,  raids 
like  Arnold's  could  not  have  occurred.  They  forgot 
that  Virginia  never  had  enough  and  never  could 
get  enough  money  to  protect  her  coast  without  a 
navy;  and  that  even  if  her  coast  were  impregnable  it 
would  not  prevent  Cornwallis  from  coming  up  from 
the  Carolinas.  They  forgot  that  Virginia  was  best 
defended,  in  the  opinion  of  her  own  greatest  son,  by 
checking  the  progress  of  the  enemy  in  the  States  to 
the  south.  Now  that  this  policy  had  failed  and 
the  enemy  was  upon  them,  somebody  must  have 


JEFFERSON  AS  WAR  GOVERNOR      95 

been  guilty  of  a  dereliction  of  duty.  George  Nicho 
las,  of  Albemarle,  rose  in  the  House  and  accused 
Jefferson  of  not  having  acted  with  wisdom  and  de 
cision  at  the  time  of  Arnold's  raid,  and  demanded 
an  investigation  of  the  facts  by  the  legislature. 
How  the  legislature  itself  had  acted,  in  panicky  dis 
solutions  when  Jefferson  wanted  its  advice,  he  did 
not  dwell  on.  Jefferson's  supporters  readily  agreed 
to  the  investigation,  and  the  hearing  was  set  for 
December  19,  1781. 

Before  the  legislature  met  in  the  autumn  Mr. 
Nicholas's  colleague  from  Albemarle  resigned  his 
seat  in  Jefferson's  favor,  to  put  the  ex-governor  "on 
an  equal  ground  for  meeting  the  inquiry,"  and  Jef 
ferson  was  unanimously  elected.  On  the  day  ap 
pointed  for  the  hearing  he  rose  and  declared  himself 
ready  to  meet  any  charges  and  answer  any  inquiries 
that  any  member  of  the  assembly  chose  to  make. 
There  was  silence.  A  resume  of  the  intended 
charges,  answered  point  by  point,  had  been  prepared 
by  Jefferson  during  the  summer  and  sent  to  the 
members.  It  had  convinced  them  all  of  his  blame- 
lessness  in  his  high  office.  The  session  that  was  set 
for  an  investigation  of  the  executive's  conduct  was 
turned  into  a  meeting  of  testimony  to  his  virtues. 
Both  House  and  Senate  passed  by  a  unanimous  vote 
the  resolution,  "That  the  sincere  thanks  of  the 
General  Assembly  be  given  to  our  former  governor 
Thomas  Jefferson,  for  his  impartial,  upright,  and  at- 


96  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

tentive  administration  whilst  in  office.  The  Assem 
bly  wish,  in  the  strongest  manner  to  declare  the  high 
opinion  which  they  entertain  of  Mr.  Jefferson's 
ability,  rectitude,  and  integrity  as  chief  magistrate 
of  this  Commonwealth,  and  mean  by  thus  publicly 
avowing  their  opinion  to  obviate  and  remove  all 
unmerited  censure." 

The  commendation  bestowed  by  Washington  on 
Jefferson's  administration  of  the  State  of  Virginia 
was  no  less  hearty.  In  a  letter  written  to  Jefferson 
on  June  8,  1781,  the  commander-in-chief  says: 
"Allow  me,  before  I  take  leave  of  your  Excellency 
in  your  public  capacity,  to  express  the  obligations 
I  am  under  for  the  readiness  and  zeal  with  which 
you  have  always  forwarded  and  supported  every 
measure  which  I  have  had  occasion  to  recommend 
through  you,  and  to  assure  you  that  I  shall  esteem 
myself  honored  by  a  continuation  of  your  friendship 
and  correspondence,  should  your  country  permit 
you  to  remain  in  the  private  walk  of  life."  This 
unqualified  and  generous  praise  Mr.  Morse  calls 
"some  courteous  words"  at  the  close  of  a  letter 
which  Washington  had  found  occasion  to  write  to 
Jefferson,  giving  the  latter  "a  sort  of  certificate  of 
good  character."  "With  such  comfort  as  he  could 
find  in  these  testimonials,"  continues  Morse,  "Jef 
ferson  withdrew  to  private  life.  .  .  .  Altogether 
he  had  had  decidedly  hard  fortune." 

Jefferson  had  indeed  had  "hard  fortune."    But 


JEFFERSON  AS  WAR  GOVERNOR      97 

hard  fortune  is  no  disgrace.  He  was  a  man  of  peace 
called  to  preside  over  a  State  inevitably  exposed  to 
the  most  exasperating  form  of  war.  He  was  a  man 
of  extreme  sensitiveness  subjected  to  a  criticism 
from  old  friends  which  was  no  less  galling  because  it 
was  undeserved.  His  domestic  life  was  saddened 
by  the  death  of  an  infant  daughter  in  April,  1781, 
and  the  steady  deterioration  of  his  frail  wife's  health. 
Not  all  of  his  measures  as  governor  may  have  been 
the  wisest.  He  might,  as  Eckenrode  suggests,  have 
requisitioned  tobacco,  flour,  and  beef  in  the  State, 
to  purchase  arms  and  ammunition  in  France.  But 
when  British  cruisers  were  swarming  in  Chesapeake 
Bay  and  hovering  over  the  shores  of  Virginia  with 
menace  of  fire  and  plunder,  it  is  difficult  to  see  how 
Jefferson  could  have  either  got  the  tobacco  to 
France  or  the  arms  into  Virginia.  The  French  fleet 
could  not  be  enlisted  in  any  permanent  defense  of 
our  shores.  At  most  they  would  come  up  from  the 
West  Indies  to  participate  in  some  strategic  move 
against  the  British.  They  hardly  helped  us  at  all 
until  the  Yorktown  campaign — but  there  their  help 
meant  victory. 

The  single  official  act  of  his  governorship  that 
gave  Jefferson  unalloyed  satisfaction  was  the  signing 
of  the  resolution  of  the  Virginia  Legislature  trans 
ferring  the  western  territory,  which  was  Virginia's 
by  the  double  claim  of  charter  and  conquest,  to  the 
government  of  the  United  States.  On  January  2, 


98  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

1781,  the  very  day  that  the  definite  news  of  Arnold's 
approach  reached  Richmond,  the  legislature,  before 
its  hasty  adjournment,  ceded  the  territory  north  of 
the  Ohio  to  the  United  States,  on  condition  that  the 
States  should  ratify  the  Articles  of  Confederation. 
Jefferson  transmitted  the  resolution  to  the  president 
of  Congress,  expressing  the  hope  that  "the  other 
States  of  the  Union,  equally  impressed  with  the 
necessity  of  that  important  convention  [the  Arti 
cles  of  Confederation]  shall  be  willing  to  sacrifice 
equally  to  its  completion.  This  single  event  [con 
federation],  could  it  take  place  shortly,  would 
overweigh  every  success  which  the  enemy  have 
hitherto  obtained,  and  render  desperate  the  hopes 
to  which  those  successes  have  given  birth."  Vir 
ginia's  splendid  example  won  the  cause.  Within 
two  months  the  last  State,  Maryland,  signed  the 
Articles,  and  the  United  States  had  its  first  Con 
stitution  in  black  on  white. 

The  Northwest  Territory  thus  ceded  by  Virginia 
was  the  beginning  of  the  magnificent  public  domain 
of  the  United  States,  which,  during  the  next  two 
generations,  through  cessions  by  the  States,  pur 
chase  from  France,  treaty  with  England,  conquest 
from  Mexico,  was  extended  to  the  Pacific  coast;  and 
whose  political  organization,  economic  development, 
and  social  amalgamation  have  exercised  the  most 
potent  influence  on  the  course  of  American  history. 
By  the  transfer  of  the  Northwest  Territory,  as  gov- 


JEFFERSON  AS  WAR  GOVERNOR      99 

ernor  of  Virginia,  and  the  purchase  of  the  Louisiana 
Territory,  as  President  of  the  United  States,  Thomas 
Jefferson  set  his  seal  to  the  acquisition  of  a  national 
domain  imperial  in  extent  and  exhaustless  in  wealth; 
by  his  plan  of  government  for  the  territory  west  of 
the  Alleghanies  in  1784  and  his  despatch  of  Lewis 
and  Clark  to  the  Pacific  coast  twenty  years  later,  he 
stamped  his  name  on  our  great  Western  wilderness 
and  his  ideas  on  all  our  subsequent  territorial  policy. 
Jefferson  retired  from  the  governorship  in  the 
midsummer  of  1781  under  the  double  cloud  of  official 
criticism  and  domestic  anxiety.  He  was  a  man 
singularly  free  his  life  long  from  feelings  of  resent 
ment  or  revenge.  Yet  the  sense  of  his  imputed 
failure  in  the  highest  office  within  the  gift  of  his 
"  countrymen "  lingered  for  many  months  to  em 
bitter  a  heart  racked  with  the  pain  of  watching  its 
dearest  treasure  slowly  stolen  away  by  the  inexora 
ble  hand  of  death.  He  believed  that  he  had  done 
with  public  life  forever.  The  thought  of  office  al 
most  sickened  him.  He  declined  an  appointment 
by  Congress  in  June,  1781,  to  join  Adams,  Franklin, 
Jay,  and  Laurens  in  Europe  to  represent  the  United 
States  in  a  proposed  peace  congress  at  Vienna.  He 
refused  an  election  to  Congress  by  the  Virginia 
legislature  in  December.  To  his  kinsman,  Edmund 
Randolph,  he  wrote  from  Monticello:  "I  have  re 
tired  to  my  farm,  my  family,  and  my  books,  from 
which  I  think  nothing  will  evermore  separate  me. 


100  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

A  desire  to  leave  public  office  with  a  reputation  not 
more  blotted  than  it  has  deserved  will  oblige  me  to 
emerge  at  the  next  session  of  our  assembly  and 
perhaps  to  accept  a  seat  in  it,  but  as  I  go  with  a 
single  object  I  shall  withdraw  when  that  shall  be 
concluded."1  His  intimate  friends,  Madison  and 
Monroe,  both  tried  to  coax  him  from  the  tent  of 
Achilles.  The  former  thought  that  his  "keen  sensi 
bility"  (sensitiveness)  was  not  "dictated  either  by 
philosophy  or  patriotism,"  and  Monroe  frankly  told 
him  that  his  conduct  was  provoking  murmurs.  But 
still  Jefferson  persevered  in  his  course  of  "obstinate 
condolement."  He  could  have  comforted  himself, 
he  writes  Monroe,  "under  the  disapprobation  of  the 
well-meaning  but  uninformed  people,"  but  the  mis 
trust  of  their  enlightened  representatives,  letting 
him  "stand  for  months  arraigned  of  treason  of  the 
heart"  as  well  as  "weakness  of  the  head,"  was  a 
"wound  in  his  spirit  which  could  only  be  cured  by 
the  all-healing  grave."  This  distressing  period  of 
morbid  reflection  on  past  chagrin  and  mortal  anxiety 
for  what  the  next  day  might  bring  forth  passed  with 
the  death  of  Mrs.  Jefferson,  early  in  September, 
1782.  That  great  baptism  of  sorrow  swept  away  all 
lesser  memories  of  ill,  and  Jefferson  was  ready  when 
his  country  called  him  a  few  weeks  later  to  a  post  of 
honor  and  service. 

1  Referring,  of  course,  to  the  proposed  examination  of  his  conduct 
by  the  legislature,  set  for  December  19,  1781.  Jefferson's  letter  to 
Randolph  was  written  in  September. 


CHAPTER  V 
THE  MISSION  TO  FRANCE 

I  do  love  this  people  with  all  my  heart,  and  think  that  with  a  better 
religion,  a  better  form  of  Government  and  their  present  governors  their 
condition  and  Country  would  be  most  enviable.  (Jefferson  to  Mrs.  John 
Adams,  June  21,  1785.) 

THE  surrender  of  Cornwallis  at  Yorktown  put  an 
end  to  the  American  Revolution.  On  March  5, 1782, 
the  British  Parliament  authorized  the  ministry  to 
make  peace,  and  a  fortnight  later  Lord  North,  who 
had  been  at  the  head  of  the  government  for  twelve 
years,  resigned  the  seals  to  the  Marquis  of  Rock- 
ingham,  the  liberal  Whig  under  whom  the  Stamp 
Act  had  been  repealed  in  1766.  Rockingham  died 
in  July,  but  his  successor,  Lord  Shelburne,  carried 
on  his  policy  of  a  friendly  consideration  of  American 
claims.  Benjamin  Franklin  was  at  the  head  of  our 
peace  commission  in  Paris,  with  Jay,  Adams,  and 
Laurens  as  his  colleagues.  They  were  all  able  men, 
but  the  negotiations  halted  a  bit.  Franklin  was 
seventy-six  years  old  and  not  in  the  best  of  health. 
Jay  and  Adams  had  to  leave  their  respective  diplo 
matic  posts  in  Madrid  and  Amsterdam  to  take  part 
in  the  discussions  in  Paris,  while  Laurens  was  cap 
tured  by  the  English  on  the  voyage  to  Europe  and 

held  a  prisoner  in  the  Tower  of  London  until  the 

101 


JEFFERSON 

conferences  were  nearly  over.  Congress  thought  it 
wise  to  add  to  the  commission  a  member  fresh  from 
America,  acquainted  at  first  hand  with  the  condi 
tions  of  the  later  years  of  the  war;  and  their  unani 
mous  choice  fell  on  Jefferson.  The  appointment 
reached  him  at  Monticello,  November  25,  1782,  and 
he  immediately  accepted  it,  not  only  as  a  rare  op 
portunity  for  public  service,  but  as  a  relief  from  the 
brooding  sorrow  of  his  great  affliction.  His  passion 
for  art,  music,  science,  and  philosophy  heightened 
the  anticipation  of  companionship  with  the  noted 
men  of  culture  whose  names  graced  the  intellectual 
capital  of  the  world  in  the  latter  days  of  the  old 
regime  in  France.  Paris  was  his  Mecca. 

Jefferson  left  Monticello  for  Philadelphia  in  De 
cember.  The  French  minister,  Luzerne,  offered  him 
passage  on  the  frigate  Romulus,  on  which  Jefferson's 
friend  and  late  visitor  to  Monticello,  the  Marquis  de 
Chastellux,1  was  also  to  sail.  But  Jefferson's  view 
of  the  towers  of  Notre  Dame  and  the  courts  of  the 
Louvre  was  destined  to  still  further  postponement. 
While  the  Romulus  lay  a  few  miles  below  Baltimore, 
blocked  by  the  ice  and  fearful  of  the  British  cruisers 

1  De  Chastellux  (1734-88)  was  ome  of  the  French  generals  in  the 
American  Revolution,  and  a  member  of  the  Academic  frangaise.  He 
published  his  Travels  in  the  Southern  States  of  America  in  1788.  We 
are  indebted  to  Chastellux  for  one  of  the  most  charming  descriptions 
of  Jefferson  in  retirement  at  Monticello  in  the  spring  of  1782:  "A 
man  not  yet  forty,  tall  and  with  a  mild  and  pleasing  countenance, 
but  whose  mind  and  understanding  are  ample  substitutes  for  every 
exterior  grace.  An  American  who,  without  ever  having  quitted  his 
own  country,  is  at  once  a  musician,  skilled  in  drawing,  a  geometrician 


THE  MISSION  TO  FRANCE          103 

that  were  reported  off  the  capes  of  Chesapeake  Bay, 
word  arrived  that  the  preliminaries  of  peace  had 
been  signed  in  Paris.  There  was,  then,  no  further 
immediate  need  for  Jefferson's  services  abroad, 
though  he  remained  in  Philadelphia,  his  mission 
" suspended"  only,  until  Congress  should  have 
assurance  that  everything  was  proceeding  smoothly 
toward  the  final  peace.  On  April  1,  1783,  Congress 
thanked  Jefferson  for  the  readiness  with  which  he 
had  undertaken  "a  service  which  from  the  present 
situation  of  affairs"  they  "apprehend  can  be  dis 
pensed  with,"  and  by  the  middle  of  May  he  was 
back  at  Monticello. 

But  not  for  long.  Just  three  weeks  after  his 
arrival  home  he  was  elected  by  the  Virginia  legisla 
ture,  with  his  friend  James  Monroe  and  three  other 
colleagues,  to  serve  for  the  next  ensuing  term  of 
Congress.  The  impotence  and  ignominy  of  that 
body  at  the  close  of  the  Revolution  were  notorious. 
Our  debt  was  huge,  the  continental  currency  was 
worthless,  and  Congress  had  no  competency  to  lay 
taxes.  The  States  were  quarrelling  over  boundaries 
and  tariff  reprisals,  while  Congress  had  no  adequate 

and  astronomer,  a  natural  philosopher,  legislator,  and  statesman. 
A  Senator  of  America,  who  sat  for  two  years  in  that  famous  Con 
gress  which  brought  about  the  Revolution  ...  a  Governor  of 
Virginia,  who  filled  that  difficult  station  during  the  recent  invasions 
of  Arnold,  of  Phillips,  and  of  Cornwallis.  .  .  .  Sometimes  natural 
philosophy,  at  others  politics  or  the  arts  were  the  topics  of  our  con 
versation,  for  no  object  had  escaped  Mr.  Jefferson;  and  it  seemed  as 
if  from  his  youth  he  had  placed  his  mind,  as  he  had  his  house,  on 
an  elevated  situation  from  which  he  might  contemplate  the  universe." 


104  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

machinery  either  for  the  settlement  of  their  quarrels 
with  one  another  or  the  enforcement  of  their  obedi 
ence  to  the  central  power.  Foreign  nations  were 
naturally  sceptical  about  reposing  confidence  in  a 
government  which  could  not  win  the  confidence  of 
its  own  States,  and  diplomats  in  Paris,  London,  and 
Madrid  blandly  asked  whether  they  were  expected 
to  make  treaties  with  thirteen  American  nations  or 
one.  The  army  was  unpaid  and  mutinous.  "They 
have  swords  in  their  hands,"  wrote  Gouverneur 
Morris  to  Jay,  "and  you  know  enough  of  the  history 
of  mankind  to  know  much  more  than  I  have  said." 
The  dignified  and  pathetic  appeal  of  Washington 
himself  quelled  the  insubordination  of  the  officers 
at  Newburgh,  in  March,  1783,  but  a  few  months 
later  eighty  men  of  a  Pennsylvania  regiment,  raw 
recruits  whose  pay  was  in  arrears,  marched  on 
Philadelphia  declaring  that  they  would  "have  their 
rights"  from  Congress.  They  swaggered  through 
the  streets  with  a  good  deal  of  harmless  bluster, 
which  was  turned  into  riot  and  ribaldry  when  they 
"found  their  unerring  way  to  the  wine-bottles  and 
ale-casks  of  hospitable  Philadelphia."  Congress 
protested  against  this  insult  to  its  dignity  by  with 
drawing  from  the  city  and  the  State.  It  established 
itself  first  in  Princeton,  New  Jersey,  then  moved  to 
Trenton,  and  finally  to  Annapolis,  Maryland. 

It  was  at  Trenton  that  Jefferson  found  Congress 
and  took  his  seat,  November  4,  1783.    That  same 


THE  MISSION  TO  FRANCE          105 

day  the  body  adjourned  to  meet  at  Annapolis  three 
weeks  later.  But  so  insignificant  had  Congress  be 
come  that  a  majority  of  the  States,  necessary  to 
constitute  a  house  for  any  kind  of  business,  were 
not  represented  in  Annapolis  before  the  middle  of 
December.  Jefferson  sat  only  from  December  until 
the  following  May,  but  these  five  months  were  full 
of  activity.  His  name  was  at  the  head  of  most  of 
the  important  committees  and  his  pen  was  in  con 
stant  requisition.  He  wrote  the  reply  which  the 
president  of  Congress  made  to  General  Washington 
when  the  latter  laid  down  the  command  of  the 
army  which  he  had  so  wonderfully  led  for  eight 
years.  He  took  up  Gouverneur  Morris's  suggestion 
for  a  decimal  system  of  coinage,  substituting  our 
dollar  for  Morris's  absurd  unit  of  1-1440  of  a  dollar, 
and  advocating  the  extension  of  the  decimal  system 
to  all  our  tables  of  weights  and  measures — a  service 
for  which  school  children  and  teachers,  clerks  and 
merchants,  "the  mason,  the  shipwright,  and  the 
carpenter,"  the  "butcher,  the  baker,  and  the  can 
dlestick-maker"  will  all  gladly  join  in  erecting  a 
monument  to  him  when  the  present  complicated 
and  stupid  tables  are  abolished. 

The  treaty  of  peace  with  Great  Britain  came  be 
fore  Congress  in  December,  1783,  but  it  was  not 
until  the  middle  of  January  that  representatives 
from  the  nine  States  necessary  for  its  ratification 
could  be  secured.  Several  members  of  Congress 


106  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

were  in  favor  of  ratifying  by  the  vote  of  seven 
States  only,  trusting  that  the  British  Government 
might  not  detect  the  harmless  fraud — an  eloquent 
testimony  both  to  the  members'  own  regard  for  the 
sanctity  of  the  law  of  their  country  and  to  their 
estimate  of  its  importance  in  the  eyes  of  foreign 
nations.  Jefferson  discountenanced  this  plan  as  "a 
dishonorable  prostitution  of  our  seal."1  Delegates 
from  Connecticut  and  South  Carolina  arrived  at 
last,  and  on  January  14,  1784,  Jefferson  had  the 
satisfaction  of  setting  his  name  to  the  ratification 
of  the  treaty  acknowledging  the  Declaration  of  In 
dependence  which  he  had  drafted  seven  and  a  half 
years  before.  Other  signers  of  the  Declaration  who 
were  present  in  Congress  to  participate  in  the  rati 
fication  were  Roger  Sherman,  Elbridge  Gerry,  Rob 
ert  Morris,  and  William  Ellery. 

By  far  the  most  important  of  Jefferson's  many 
services,  however,  during  the  few  months  of  his 
attendance  at  Congress  was  the  drafting  of  a  plan 

1  Jefferson  had  been  appointed  on  July  4,  1776,  on  a  committee 
with  Franklin  and  Adams  to  prepare  a  device  for  a  seal  for  the 
United  States.  Each  of  the  three  members  of  the  committee  sug 
gested  a  device,  Jefferson's  being  the  most  elaborate.  But  Congress 
was  too  critical  or  too  busy  (although  further  designs  were  submitted 
in  1779  and  1780)  to  decide  on  the  seal  until  the  close  of  the  war. 
On  June  20,  1782,  the  great  seal  of  the  United  States  was  adopted 
from  a  design  sent  over  from  England  by  our  minister,  John  Adams, 
and  furnished  to  him,  it  is  said,  by  Sir  John  Prestwich,  Baronet,  who 
was  a  friend  of  America  in  the  Revolution.  A  most  interesting  illus 
trated  article  in  Harper's  Magazine  for  July,  1856,  describes  the 
genesis  of  the  great  seal,  and  the  reproductions  show  the  great 
superiority  of  Jefferson's  design  to  the  one  adopted. 


THE  MISSION  TO  FRANCE 

for  the  government  of  our  western  territory.  Vir 
ginia's  cession  of  the  territory  north  and  west  of  the 
Ohio,  which  we  mentioned  near  the  close  of  the  last 
chapter,  was  completed  on  March  1,  1784.  Jeffer 
son  was  appointed  with  Chase,  of  Maryland,  and 
Howell,  of  Rhode  Island,  to  prepare  a  plan  for  its 
temporary  government.  Without  waiting  for  the 
other  States  with  western  claims  to  cede  their  lands 
beyond  the  Alleghanies,  Jefferson  drew  up  and  re 
ported  an  "  Ordinance  for  the  government  of  the 
Western  Territory  of  the  United  States."  The 
draft  of  the  ordinance  in  Jefferson's  handwriting  is 
in  the  archives  of  the  State  Department  at  Wash 
ington.  It  provided  for  the  division  of  the  whole 
territory  between  the  Alleghanies  and  the  Missis 
sippi,  into  "States"  by  degrees  of  latitude  and 
meridians  of  longitude.  Each  "  State,"  as  soon  as 
it  should  have  "  acquired  20,000  free  inhabitants," 
should  be  authorized  by  Congress  to  establish  a 
permanent  constitution  and  government  for  itself, 
which  must  conform  to  the  following  principles: 

(1)  It  must  forever  remain  a  part  of  this  Confed 

eration  of  the  United  States  of  America. 

(2)  Its  powers,  property,  and  territory  must  be 

subject  to  the  government  of  the  United 
States  in  Congress  assembled. 

(3)  It  must  pay  the  part  of  the  federal  debts  con 

tracted   or  to   be   contracted   which   was 
apportioned  to  it  by  Congress. 


108  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

(4)  Its  government  must  be  republican  in  form 

and  admit  no  person  to  be  a  citizen  who 
holds  any  hereditary  title. 

(5)  Slavery  should  not  exist  in  any  of  the  " States" 

after  the  year  1800  of  the  Christian  era. 

Whenever  any  of  these  new  States  gained  as 
many  inhabitants  as  the  least  populous  of  the 
thirteen  original  States,  its  delegates  should  be  ad 
mitted  to  Congress  "on  an  equal  footing  with  the 
said  original  States,  provided  nine  States  agreed  to 
such  admission."  Until  then  they  should  have  a 
representative  in  Congress  with  the  right  of  debat 
ing  but  not  of  voting. 

The  student  of  our  political  institutions  will  rec 
ognize  in  this  ordinance  of  Jefferson's  all  the  essen 
tial  principles  of  the  organization  and  government 
of  Territories  of  the  United  States.  Since  the  year 
1910  Territorial  governments  within  our  country 
proper  have  ceased;  an  unbroken  band  of  forty-eight 
States  extends  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific. 
But  from  the  Virginia  cession  of  1784  down  to  the 
Civil  War  at  least  one-half  of  the  area  of  the  United 
States  was  in  the  form  of  Territories,  and  the  recip 
rocal  influence  of  the  old  States  on  the  new  Territo 
ries  and  the  new  Territories  on  the  old  States  has 
been  one  of  the  most  important  of  the  political  and 
social  chapters  of  American  history.  In  the  light  of 
these  facts  Jefferson's  Ordinance  for  the  government 
of  the  West  takes  on  a  great  significance.  Its  provi- 


THE  MISSION  TO  FRANCE          109 

sions  were  copied  largely  in  the  famous  Northwest 
Ordinance  of  1787  and  in  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States.  Its  spirit  influenced  our  Territorial 
governments  for  more  than  a  century. 

Jefferson's  Ordinance  was  not  adopted  in  Mo, 
however.  The  fantastic  names  which  he  suggested 
for  the  new  Western  States  were  dropped;  the  clause 
forbidding  the  holder  of  an  hereditary  title  to  be 
come  a  citizen  was  stricken  out;  and  the  provision 
for  the  abolition  of  slavery  after  the  year  1800  was 
defeated.  Only  the  three  States  of  South  Carolina, 
Maryland,  and  Virginia  actually  voted  against  the 
no-slavery  clause;  but  Georgia  and  Delaware  had 
no  delegates  at  all  in  Congress  at  the  time,  New 
Jersey's  vote  was  lost  because  she  had  only  a  single 
delegate  present,  and  North  Carolina's  because  her 
two  delegates  were  paired.  So  there  remained  but 
the  six  States  of  New  Hampshire,  Massachusetts, 
Connecticut,  Rhode  Island,  New  York,  and  Penn 
sylvania  in  support  of  the  clause.  One  more  dele 
gate  in  attendance  from  New  Jersey,  or  the  change 
of  one  vote  of  the  Virginia  or  North  Carolina  dele 
gation  would  have  given  the  vote  of  the  seventh 
State  necessary  to  make  the  majority. 

It  is  doubtful  if  a  vote  fraught  with  more  serious 
consequences  for  the  subsequent  history  of  our 
country  has  ever  been  passed  by  the  Congress  of 
the  United  States  than  this  rejection  of  a  no-slavery 
clause  in  the  plan  of  government  for  our  Western 


110  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

territory.  Had  the  clause  been  adopted  and  ob 
served,  the  territory  south  of  the  Ohio  as  well  as 
that  to  the  north  would  have  been  organized  as  free 
soil.  The  next  fifteen  years  would  not  have  seen 
the  admission  of  Kentucky  (1792)  and  Tennessee 
(1796)  as  slave  States,  and  the  organization  of  the 
huge  Mississippi  Territory  (1798)  with  slavery. 
The  invention  of  the  cotton-gin  and  the  consequent 
hunger  for  new  slave  soil  was  still  a  decade  off  when 
Jefferson's  clause  was  rejected.  A  broad  band  of 
free  soil  might  have  extended  from  the  Lakes  to  the 
Gulf,  shutting  slavery  up  in  the  original  States  of 
the  South  along  the  Atlantic,  and  presenting  a  solid 
front  of  freedom  on  the  Mississippi.  Instead,  the 
sectional  antagonism  in  the  old  States  was  carried 
out  to  the  frontier,  there  to  kindle  a  struggle  for  the 
possession  of  every  new  acquisition  of  territory. 
The  Civil  War  is  latent  in  the  vote  of  1784.  Abra 
ham  Lincoln  and  the  Republican  party  came  back 
to  the  rejected  clause  of  Jefferson's  Ordinance  for 
their  platform:  no  slavery  in  the  Territories  of  the 
United  States.  Jefferson  expressed  his  disappoint 
ment  mildly  to  Madison  in  a  letter  of  April  25: 
"South  Carolina,  Maryland,  and!  Virginia!  voted 
against  it";  but  to  his  French  friend,  De  Meusnier, 
he  poured  out  his  indignant  sorrow:  "The  voice  of  a 
single  individual  would  have  prevented  this  abomi 
nable  crime  from  spreading  itself  over  the  new  coun 
try.  Thus  we  see  the  fate  of  millions  unborn  hang- 


THE  MISSION  TO  FRANCE          111 

ing  on  the  tongue  of  one  man,  and  heaven  was  silent 
in  that  awful  moment." 

With  the  advent  of  peace  and  the  acknowledg 
ment  of  our  independence  it  became  necessary  for  us 
to  win  a  respected  place  in  the  family  of  nations. 
Our  commerce  had  been  monopolized  by  England 
to  such  an  extent  that  we  had  had  little  opportu 
nity  of  showing  to  other  European  nations  the 
reciprocal  advantages  that  would  result  from  an 
exchange  of  goods.  John  Adams  declared  in  his 
later  days  that  he  could  not  read  the  British  Acts  of 
Trade  as  a  young  lawyer  "without  pronouncing  a 
hearty  curse  upon  them  ...  as  a  humiliation,  a 
degradation,  and  a  disgrace"  to  his  country.  But 
the  British  acts  were  not  exceptionally  severe.  On 
the  contrary,  they  were  rather  more  liberal  than 
those  of  most  European  countries.  Free  trade  was 
a  thing  unknown  in  the  eighteenth  century.  Every 
land  surrounded  itself  with  tariff  walls  and  tried  to 
monopolize  its  colonies'  products.  So  long  as  we 
were  a  part  of  the  great  British  Empire  we  enjoyed 
the  benefits  of  her  colonial  monopoly,  in  spite  of 
the  exasperating  acts  arising  from  the  enforcement  of 
that  monopoly,  and  our  products  found  good  mar 
kets  and  favorable  tariff  discriminations  within  the 
Empire.  But  when  we  became  an  independent  na 
tion  we  found  ourselves  outside  the  protective  sys 
tem  of  Great  Britain,  without  thereby  being  ad 
mitted  to  the  privileges  of  trade  with  the  other 


112  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

countries  of  the  Old  World.  We  were  independent, 
but  alone.  We  were  known  as  "successful  rebels," 
but  not  as  good  customers.  We  had,  to  be  sure, 
made  a  fairly  favorable  treaty  of  commerce  with 
France  in  1778,  but  the  grip  of  monopoly  and  privi 
lege  on  the  old  regime  prevented  Louis  XVFs  min 
isters  from  putting  it  into  operation.  Holland  and 
Sweden  also  had  made  commercial  treaties  with  us 
during  the  war  and  so  opened  a  modest  opportunity 
for  the  "economic  invasion"  of  Europe  by  our  fish 
and  rice,  our  lumber,  whale-oil,  tobacco,  and  wheat. 
But  Great  Britain  refused  to  open  to  the  United 
States  the  trade  with  the  West  Indies  which  we  had 
enjoyed  as  British  colonies.  She  even  refused  to 
put  us  on  the  footing  of  "the  most  favored  nation" 
in  our  trade  with  the  home  land.  We  had  no  trade 
agreements,  hence  no  security  of  commerce,  with 
Russia,  Prussia,  Spain,  Portugal,  Denmark,  Tus 
cany,  Naples,  Venice,  Rome,  Turkey,  Morocco,  Al 
giers — in  short,  with  hardly  any  of  the  maritime 
nations  of  the  Old  World.  ; 

Congress  decided  in  the  spring  of  1784  to  make  an 
effort  to  break  down  the  protective  barriers  in 
Europe.  On  May  7  it  resolved  that  "a  minister 
plenipotentiary  be  appointed  to  active  conjunction 
with  Mr.  Adams  and  Doctor  Franklin  in  negotiating 
treaties  of  commerce  with  foreign  nations."  The 
choice  of  Congress  fell  on  Jefferson.  It  was  his 
fourth  invitation  since  the  Declaration  of  Indepen- 


THE  MISSION  TO  FRANCE          113 

dence  to  go  to  Paris  on  a  public  mission.  And  this 
time  he  was  not  to  be  disappointed.  As  the  ap 
pointment  was  for  only  two  years,  he  left  his  younger 
daughter  and  his  nephews  at  home,  taking  only  his 
eldest  daughter,  Martha,  who  since  Mrs.  Jefferson's 
death  had  become  his  inseparable  companion.  He 
left  Annapolis  for  Philadelphia  and  Boston  four  days 
after  his  appointment.  "While  passing  through  the 
different  States/7  he  says  in  his  Memoir,  "I  made  a 
point  of  informing  myself  of  the  state  of  commerce 
in  each,  went  on  to  New  Hampshire  with  the  same 
view,  and  returned  to  Boston."  He  was  enthusias 
tically  received  in  Boston,  where,  as  he  wrote  Gerry, 
much  of  his  time  was  "  occupied  by  the  hospitality 
and  civilities  of  this  place."  A  guest's  chair  was 
provided  for  him  in  the  general  court  of  Massa 
chusetts.  He  sailed  for  Europe  on  Monday,  July  5, 
in  the  Ceres,  and  as  his  ship  dropped  down  the  har 
bor,  through  its  emerald  islands,  she  was  wafted  on 
her  way  by  the  cheers  of  thousands  of  patriots 
gathered  in  Faneuil  Hall,  the  "Cradle  of  Liberty," 
to  listen  to  the  annual  oration  on  the  text  of  his 
immortal  Declaration.  A  pleasant  voyage  of  nine 
teen  days  brought  the  Ceres  to  Cowes,  where  Jeffer 
son  was  detained  by  the  illness  of  his  daughter. 
He  reached  Paris  early  in  August.  "Immediately 
called  on  Doctor  Franklin  at  Passy,"  he  writes, 
"communicated  to  him  our  charge,  and  we  wrote 
to  Mr.  Adams,  then  at  the  Hague,  to  join  us." 


114  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

As  soon  as  the  plenipotentiaries  were  all  together 
in  Paris  they  drew  up  the  general  form  of  a  commer 
cial  treaty  on  a  plan  proposed  by  Jefferson  and  re 
flecting  his  humanitarian  principles.  This  treaty 
has  seldom  received  its  due  notice  at  the  hands  of 
historians,  because,  unfortunately,  instead  of  being 
written  into  the  law  of  nations,  it  was  consigned  to 
the  archives  of  the  diplomatic  correspondence  of  the 
United  States.  Washington  called  it  "the  most 
original  and  liberal  treaty  ever  negotiated/ '  and 
declared  that  it  would  open  aa  new  sera  in  negotia 
tion."  Some  of  its  twenty-seven  articles  reveal 
the  inhuman  practices  which  prevailed  even  among 
friendly  nations  toward  the  close  of  the  eighteenth 
century.1  Others  run  far  in  advance  of  the  position 
yet  reached  by  nations  that  call  themselves  civilized, 
in  the  delimitation  of  the  inevitable  horrors  of  war 
and  in  the  protection  of  the  rights  of  neutrals.  The 
coasts  of  the  enemy  were  not  to  be  ravaged,  priva 
teering  was  forbidden,  non-combatants  on  land  and 
sea  were  not  to  be  molested,  neutral  property  was 
not  to  be  confiscated.  "It  seems  a  mockery  of 
noble  endeavor,"  says  James  Parton  in  his  enter 
taining  biography  of  Jefferson,  "that  such  a  draft 
should  have  been  placed  on  record  on  the  eve  of 

1  The  articles,  for  example,  providing  that  mariners  who  were 
shipwrecked  should  not  be  plundered,  and  that  "when  subjects  or 
citizens  of  one  party  shall  die  within  the  jurisdiction  of  the  other," 
their  bodies  "shall  be  decently  buried  and  protected  from  violence 
or  disturbance." 


THE  MISSION  TO  FRANCE          115 

wars  which  desolated  Europe  for  twenty  years,  dur 
ing  which  every  principle  of  humanity  and  right  was 
ruthlessly  trampled  under  foot."  So  the  moralist  of 
to-day  might  view  the  noble  labors  of  The  Hague 
conferences  and  Lake  Mohonk  peace  meetings ! 

John  Adams  was  appointed  minister  to  England 
in  February,  1785,  and  the  aged  Franklin  was  re 
lieved  of  the  burden  of  his  diplomatic  post  at  Paris 
a  few  weeks  later.  Jefferson  was  appointed  minister 
to  France  in  Franklin's  place,  for  a  period  of  three 
years  from  March  10,  1785.  He  entered  on  his 
mission  with  the  best  of  auguries  for  its  success  with 
the  French  Court — a  neatly  turned  phrase.  "You 
replace  Doctor  Franklin,  I  hear,"  said  the  foreign 
minister,  Vergennes.  "I  succeed  him,"  replied 
Jefferson;  "nobody  could  replace  him." 

There  is  little  that  is  exciting  or  even  picturesque 
in  the  strictly  official  life  of  Jefferson  in  his  four 
years  residence  in  Paris.  He  says  himself:  "My 
duties  at  Paris  were  confined  to  a  few  objects,  the 
receipt  of  our  whale-oils,  salted  fish,  and  salted  meats 
on  favorable  terms,  the  admission  of  our  rice  on 
equal  terms  with  that  of  Piedmont,  Egypt,  and  the 
Levant,  a  mitigation  of  the  monopolies  of  our  to 
bacco  by  the  Farmers-General,  and  a  free  admission 
of  our  productions  into  their  islands."  He  found 
the  foreign  minister,  Vergennes,  "frank,  honorable, 
and  easy  of  access,"  though  he  had  the  reputation 
with  the  diplomatic  corps  at  Paris  of  being  "wary 


116  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

and  slippery."  But  frank  and  honorable  as  Ver- 
gennes  might  be,  he  did  not  advance  far  on  the  way 
of  commercial  confidence  in  the  new  American  na 
tion.1  Jefferson  returned  again  and  again  to  his 
assault  on  the  privileges  of  the  tobacco  monopolists 
and  the  salt  ring.  "His  diplomatic  correspondence 
with  Vergennes  and  Montmorin," ,  says  Morse, 
"fairly  reeks  with  the  flavor  of  whale-oil,  salt-fish, 
and  tobacco."  He  declared  that  his  countrymen 
were  ready  and  eager  to  buy  French  goods  if  they 
could  only  find  the  return  market  in  France  for 
their  own.  He  drew  up  statistics  to  show  that 
King  Louis  would  gain,  as  well  as  the  American 
government,  by  breaking  up  the  monopoly  of  the 
farmers-general  and  collecting  his  own  royal  im 
posts  directly  on  American  importations.  But  it 
was  of  no  avail.  Vergennes  confessed  that  he  saw 
the  force  of  Jefferson's  arguments,  but  replied  that 
the  King  received  $28,000,000  a  year  from  the  Farm 
now,  that  this  method  of  collecting  the  revenue 
"was  of  very  ancient  date,  and  that  it  was  always 
hazardous  to  alter  arrangements  of  long  standing" 

1  In  his  Memoir,  written  nearly  forty  years  later,  Jefferson  speaks 
of  Vergennes  and  the  French  Government  as  "entirely  disposed  to 
befriend  us  on  all  occasions  and  to  yield  us  every  indulgence  not  ab 
solutely  injurious  to  themselves."  But  in  a  letter  of  January  30, 
1787,  to  Madison,  he  says  of  Vergennes:  "He  is  a  great  minister  in 
European  affairs,  but  has  a  very  imperfect  idea  of  our  institutions 
and  no  confidence  in  them.  His  devotion  to  the  principles  of  pure 
despotism  renders  him  unafifectionate  to  our  governments  [notice 
the  plural!].  But  his  fear  of  England  makes  him  value  us  as  a 
makeweight." 


THE  MISSION  TO  FRANCE          117 

— the  doctrine  which  brought  the  throne  of  France 
down  with  a  crash  before  another  ten  years  passed ! 
Some  few  minor  privileges  for  American  com 
merce  Jefferson  did  gain  by  dint  of  persistent  notes. 
Two  new  free  ports  were  opened  to  American  goods; 
duties  were  lowered  somewhat  in  other  ports  and 
their  collection  made  less  annoying;  whale-oil  and 
spermaceti  were  allowed  to  come  in  with  only  the 
duty  on  their  crude  bulk,  and  pearl-ashes,  beaver- 
skins,  leather,  ship-timber,  and  some  minor  articles 
were  admitted  free  of  duty.  The  farmers-general 
were  ordered  to  purchase  some  of  their  tobacco  in 
America,  and  a  commission  to  encourage  the  impor 
tation  of  American  rice  was  promised.  But  this 
was  the  extent  of  our  minister's  success  when,  on 
August  6,  1787,  he  "received  an  intimation  from 
the  French  government,"  as  he  wrote  our  foreign 
secretary,  John  Jay,  "that  it  would  be  agreeable 
not  to  press  our  commercial  regulations  at  that 
moment,  the  Ministry  being  too  much  occupied 
with  the  difficulties  surrounding  them  to  spare  a 
moment  on  any  subject  that  would  admit  of  delay. " 
The  difficulties  were  gathering  indeed.  A  comp 
troller-general  of  the  finances  had  announced  the 
bankruptcy  of  the  Court.  The  King  had  in  vain 
summoned  the  notables  to  Versailles  to  help  him 
out  of  the  predicament.  The  Parlement  refused  to 
register  the  royal  edicts  of  taxation,  and  letters 
were  already  prepared  for  the  exile  of  its  members 


118  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

in  a  body.  The  pains  of  the  great  Revolution  had 
seized  on  France. 

In  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  results  of  Jefferson's 
diplomacy  were  so  meagre  in  comparison  with  his 
efforts,  those  efforts  were  by  no  means  wasted. 
The  files  of  our  State  Department  contain  no  more 
striking  examples  of  clear  and  accurate  reasoning, 
of  just  reflection  on  international  obligations,  of 
illuminating  estimate  and  analysis  of  the  national 
psychology  of  a  foreign  people,  than  Jefferson's  de 
spatches  from  France.  Even  his  enemy  John  Mar 
shall  admitted  that  Jefferson  "quitted  himself  much 
to  the  public  satisfaction"  in  his  mission  to  France; 
and  Daniel  Webster  declared  that  "Mr.  Jefferson's 
discharge  of  his  diplomatic  duties  was  marked  by 
great  ability,  diligence,  and  patriotism."  In  addi 
tion  to  his  labor  for  commercial  concessions,  Jeffer 
son  devoted  much  time  to  the  improvement  of  the 
condition  of  our  travellers,  traders,  and  seamen 
actually  in  French  ports.  He  completed  a  consular 
convention  in  1788  which  safeguarded  the  rights  of 
visiting  seamen.  His  private  purse  was  often  at 
the  disposal  of  his  embarrassed  countrymen.  His 
valuable  time  and  legal  advice  were  given  without 
price  and  without  stint  to  his  fellow  Americans  in 
difficulty  abroad. 

Nor  were  his  activities  confined  to  France  alone. 
A  most  disgraceful  state  of  affairs  existed  in  the 
western  Mediterranean.  The  "Barbary  States"  of 


THE  MISSION  TO  FRANCE          119 

Morocco,  Algiers,  Tunis,  and  Tripoli,  combining 
fanatical  religion  with  mundane  greed,  were  waging 
a  war  of  piracy  against  the  maritime  nations  of 
Christendom.  They  held  the  keys  to  the  Medi 
terranean,  and  took  tribute  of  Great  Britain,  France, 
Spain,  Holland,  Portugal,  Venice,  and  Naples  alike. 
America  was  expected  to  pay,  too.  An  American 
brig,  the  Betsy,  was  seized  and  taken  to  Morocco  in 
the  spring  of  1785,  and  its  crew  finally  liberated  only 
by  the  intervention  of  Spain.  When  asked  by  Jef 
ferson  with  what  right  his  people  made  war  with 
an  unoffending  nation  at  peace  with  them,  the 
Tripolitan  envoy  in  London  replied  that  it  was 
"written  in  the  Koran  that  all  nations  which  had 
not  acknowledged  the  Prophet  [Mohammed]  were 
sinners,  whom  it  was  the  right  and  duty  of  the 
faithful  to  plunder  and  enslave."  Outrageous  as 
the  depredations  of  these  fanatical  pirates  were,  the 
impotent  government  of  the  United  States  tinder 
the  Articles  of  Confederation  could  not  stop  them. 
Jefferson  was  ordered  to  make  a  "present"  of  $20,000 
to  the  Dey  of  Algiers,  the  "King  of  Cruelties,"  and 
another  of  $20,000  to  the  Sultan  of  Morocco.  Trip 
oli  demanded  $150,000,  with  a  tip  of  $15,000  for  the 
ambassador,  to  guarantee  a  perpetual  peace.  We 
were  reduced  to  bargaining  with  the  monastic  order 
of  the  Mathurins,  who  acted  as  emancipation  bro 
kers  in  the  Barbary  states,  to  get  our  sailors  and 
captains  ransomed  at  the  best  figures  possible. 


120  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

Indignant  over  the  treatment  of  civilized  peoples 
by  these  Mohammedan  brigands,  Jefferson  tried  to 
unite  the  maritime  nations  of  western  Europe  in  a 
league  to  enforce  peace  and  security  in  the  Mediter 
ranean.  A  joint  fleet  of  six  frigates  and  as  many 
smaller  vessels  was  to  be  maintained  by  contribu 
tions  in  proportion  to  benefits  received.  The  direc 
tion  of  the  fleet  was  to  proceed  from  Paris,  under  a 
committee  of  the  resident  ambassadors  and  minis 
ters.  Even  in  the  case  of  war  arising  between  par 
ties  to  this  league,  it  should  not  interrupt  the  work 
or  hinder  the  parties  from  being  "reputed  at  peace 
as  to  this  enterprise."  Several  of  the  European 
states  responded  favorably  to  Jefferson's  proposal, 
although  the  suspicion  that  either  France  or  England 
might  join  with  the  pirate  states  against  the  league 
could  not  be  wholly  hidden.  However,  when  Jef 
ferson  applied  to  Congress  to  initiate  the  scheme  by 
the  loan  of  a  frigate  and  a  contribution  for  its  sup 
port,  the  States  refused  to  contribute  and  the  whole 
plan  fell  through.  Jefferson's  ears  were  filled  with 
the  wails  of  American  sailors  unransomed  in  African 
prisons  during  the  whole  of  his  residence  in  France. 
Their  doleful  cries  followed  him  home  across  the 
sea.  As  secretary  of  state  he  was  still  negotiating 
for  them  in  1793,  and  ten  years  later,  as  President 
of  the  United  States,  he  sent  our  new  navy  to  the 
Mediterranean  to  seek  out  the  pirates  in  their  own 
lair  and  scourge  them  into  decency. 


THE  MISSION  TO  FRANCE          121 

It  is  rather  the  unofficial  activity  of  Jefferson  dur 
ing  his  French  mission  that  enlists  our  interest. 
The  stimulus  to  his  receptive  spirit  of  the  opportu 
nities  of  culture  in  Paris  keyed  his  mind  to  a  pitch 
of  creative  and  versatile  energy  such  as  we  have 
not  seen  in  him  before.  His  correspondence  from 
France  and  in  France  is  voluminous  and  varied.  He 
revelled  in  pictures,  sculpture,  architecture,  ma 
chinery,  books,  plants,  and  seeds.  He  visited  the 
provinces  to  get  acquainted  with  the  French  peas 
ant,  writing  from  Nice  to  his  friend  Lafayette: 
"You  must  ferret  the  people  out  of  their  hovels  as 
I  have  done,  look  into  their  kettles,  eat  their  bread, 
loll  on  their  beds  under  pretence  of  resting  yourself, 
but  in  fact  to  find  if  they  are  soft."  He  got  so  ab 
sorbed  in  a  controversy  with  the  celebrated  Buffon 
over  the  natural  history  of  the  moose  that  he  com 
missioned  his  friend  General  Sullivan,  of  New 
Hampshire,  to  go  into  the  woods  and  shoot  a  moose 
and  send  its  bones  and  skin  to  Paris.  The  box  ar 
rived  duly,  with  an  incidental  bill  of  expense  amount 
ing  to  thirty-six  guineas.  Buffon  was  convinced. 

Soon  after  his  arrival  in  Paris,  before  he  had  suc 
ceeded  to  Franklin's  place  as  minister,  Jefferson  won 
his  admission  into  the  literary  circle  by  the  publi 
cation  of  his  Notes  on  Virginia,  the  only  one  of  his 
compositions  to  rise  out  of  the  class  of  pamphlets 
to  the  dignity  of  a  bound  book.  The  Notes  on  Vir 
ginia  were  written  in  1782,  after  Jefferson's  retire- 


122  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

ment  from  the  governorship,  in  answer  to  a  series 
of  questions  addressed  to  him  by  the  secretary  of 
the  French  Legation  at  Philadelphia,  the  Marquis 
de  Barb6-Marbois.  They  contain  a  complete  de 
scription  of  the  State  of  Virginia,  its  natural  history, 
products,  climate,  population,  laws,  education,  re 
ligion,  manners,  manufactures  and  commerce,  pub 
lic  revenues  and  expenses,  history,  memorials,  and 
state  papers.  There  is  much  in  the  work  that  is 
antiquated  and  irrelevant  now,  of  course.  Many 
of  the  speculations  on  ethnology  and  natural  history 
have  been  corrected  by  modern  science.  But  in 
spite  of  this  the  volume  is  a  most  valuable  contri 
bution  to  our  social  and  economic  history,  and  a 
fascinating  picture  of  the  life  of  the  great  State  of 
Virginia  at  the  end  of  the  colonial  period. 

Finding  that  he  could  have  his  Notes  printed  in 
France  at  about  one-fourth  the  cost  of  publication 
in  Virginia,  Jefferson  had  two  hundred  copies  struck 
off  in  Paris  for  distribution  among  his  friends  in 
America  and  learned  men  in  Europe.  The  work 
was  soon  translated  into  French  and  won  for  its 
author  a  reputation  in  the  world  of  letters.  A  little 
later  his  statute  for  religious  liberty  was  passed 
through  the  legislature  of  Virginia.  It  was  trans 
lated  and  circulated  in  Europe,  where  it  made  a 
great  and  immediate  impression.  Jefferson  wrote 
to  his  fellow  reviser,  Wythe,  August  13,  1786:  "Our 
act  for  freedom  of  religion  is  extremely  applauded. 


THE  MISSION  TO  FRANCE          123 

The  ambassadors  and  ministers  of  the  several  na 
tions  at  this  court  have  asked  of  me  copies  of  it  to 
send  to  their  sovereigns,  and  it  is  inserted  at  full 
length  in  several  books  now  in  the  press;  among 
others  in  the  new  Encyclopcedia."  Jefferson  was 
invited  by  De  Meusnier,  the  editor  of  the  part  of 
the  Encyclopedic  Methodique  which  dealt  with  politi 
cal  economy  and  diplomacy,  to  answer  many  queries 
about  the  political  and  economic  history  of  our 
country,  and  he  revised  the  whole  article,  "United 
States,"  written  for  the  same  work.  When  the  ex 
citing  political  events  of  the  convocation  of  the 
notables,  the  quarrel  of  the  Court  with  the  Parle- 
ment,  the  agitation  over  the  new  taxes  and  loans, 
the  fall  of  Lomenie  de  Brienne,  and  the  summons 
of  the  States  General  followed  in  rapid  succession 
(1787-9),  Jefferson  was  recognized  by  the  liberal 
statesmen  as  a  valued  adviser. 

From  the  space  which  the  narration  of  the  events 
leading  up  to  the  French  Revolution  occupies  in 
both  his  Memoir  and  his  correspondence,  we  may 
judge  how  prominent  a  place  they  held  in  his  mind; 
and  from  the  justice  and  insight  with  which  he  de 
scribes  these  great  events,  with  which  he  was  so 
intimately  associated,  we  can  only  regret  that  we 
do  not  have  a  complete  and  elaborate  history  of  the 
outbreak  of  the  French  Revolution  from  his  pen. 
The  delicate  responsibility  of  his  position  as  accred 
ited  minister  of  a  friendly  nation  to  the  Court  of 


124  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

Louis  XVI  prevented  his  taking  that  public  part 
in  the  conduct  of  the  Revolution  which  the  liberal 
leaders  would  gladly  have  assigned  to  him,  and  to 
which  some  of  them  actually  invited  him.  But  in 
his  private  correspondence  and  intercourse  he  mani 
fested  the  liveliest  interest  in  their  cause.  He  was 
just  setting  out  on  a  journey  to  the  south  of  France 
when  the  notables  met  in  February,  1787.  He 
wrote  Lafayette :  "  I  wish  you  success  in  your  meet 
ing.  I  should  form  better  hopes  of  it  if  it  were 
divided  into  two  houses  instead  of  seven.1  Keeping 
the  good  model  of  your  neighboring  country  [Eng 
land]  before  your  eyes,  you  may  get  on  step  by  step 
towards  a  good  constitution."  And  to  the  Countess 
of  Tesse,  a  few  days  later,  he  wrote:  "I  would  have 
the  deputies  by  all  means  so  conduct  themselves  as 
to  have  him  [King  Louis]  repeat  the  calls  of  the 
Assembly.  .  .  .  They  would  thus  put  themselves 
in  the  track  of  the  best  guide  they  could  follow 
[Parliament].  .  .  .  Should  they  attempt  more  than 
the  established  habits  of  the  people  are  ripe  for, 
they  may  lose  all  and  retard  indefinitely  the  ulti 
mate  object  of  their  own  aim." 

When  the  States  General  were  called  eighteen 
months  later  Jefferson  continued  his  moderating  ad 
vice.  "If  the  Etats-Generaux  do  not  aim  at  too 


1  The  notables  were  divided  into  seven  bureaus  with  a  prince  of 
the  blood  at  the  head  of  each.  It  took  a  vote  of  four  bureaus  to 
pass  any  measure. 


THE  MISSION  TO  FRANCE          125 

much,"  he  wrote  Madison  in  November,  1788,  "they 
may  begin  a  good  constitution.  There  are  three 
articles  which  they  may  obtain:  1,  their  own  meet 
ing  periodically;  2,  the  exclusive  right  of  taxation; 
3,  the  right  of  registering  laws  and  proposing  amend 
ments  to  them,  as  exercised  now  by  the  Parlement. 
...  If  they  push  at  much  more,  all  may  fail." 
Jefferson  frequently  attended  the  sessions  of  the 
National  Assembly  at  Versailles  and  followed  the 
debates  with  sedulous  attention.  When  the  quarrel 
between  the  privileged  orders  and  the  third  estate 
threatened  to  wreck  the  work  of  the  Revolution  at 
its  inception,  he  prepared  a  plan  of  compromise 
which  he  sent  to  Lafayette  and  Rabaut  St.  Etienne. 
The  plan  was  for  the  King  to  come  forward  in  a 
royal  session  with  a  charter  of  rights  in  his  hand, 
which  every  member  of  the  Assembly  should  sign. 
The  charter  was  to  contain  five  important  conces 
sions  which  the  Court  was  willing  to  make  in  return 
for  the  support  of  the  nation,  namely:  (1)  Free 
annual  assemblies  of  the  delegates  of  the  people,  (2) 
who  should  have  the  sole  right  of  originating  the 
laws,  and  (3)  of  laying  and  appropriating  the  taxes; 
(4)  abolition  of  all  pecuniary  privileges  and  exemp 
tions;  and  (5)  a  "bill  of  rights"  guaranteeing  lib 
erty  of  conscience  and  the  press,  habeas  corpus,  and 
trial  by  jury.  The  leading  "patriots"  (Barnave, 
Lameth,  Dupont,  Mounier),  invited  by  Lafayette, 
gathered  around  Jefferson's  dinner-table  to  discuss 


126  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

plans  of  reconciliation  between  the  factions.  The 
Archbishop  of  Bordeaux,  chairman  of  the  Committee 
on  the  Constitution,  formally  invited  Jefferson,  by  a 
letter  of  July  20,  1789,  "to  attend  and  assist"  at 
the  committee  meetings,  an  invitation  which  Jeffer 
son  very  properly  declined  on  the  "obvious  consid 
eration  "  that  his  mission  to  King  Louis  XVI 's  Court 
forbade  him  "to  intermeddle  with  the  internal  trans 
actions"  of  France.  In  all  the  delicate  matter  of 
his  official  neutrality  Jefferson  conducted  himself  so 
correctly  as  to  receive  the  unqualified  commenda 
tion  of  the  King's  foreign  minister  Montmorin. 

While  the  Revolution  was  coming  to  a  head  in 
France  an  event  of  prime  importance  was  taking 
place  at  home.  Eleven  weeks  after  the  notables 
met  at  Versailles,  an  illustrious  group  of  American 
statesmen  met  in  the  convention  of  Philadelphia  to 
frame  a  new  Constitution  for  the  United  States. 
"An  assembly  of  demigods,"  Jefferson  called  them. 
He  followed  their  work  with  intense  interest,  writing 
home  long  letters  to  Washington,  Madison,  Monroe, 
Jay,  and  other  influential  friends  during  the  period 
of  deliberation  and  ratification.  Because  Jefferson 
became  a  bitter  opponent  of  the  Federalist  leaders 
who  interpreted  and  administered  the  Constitution 
during  Washington's  and  Adams's  terms  of  office, 
he  has  often  been  represented  as  an  opponent  of 
our  federal  form  of  government.  It  has  even  been 
asserted  that  he  was  sent  out  of  the  country  on  the 


THE  MISSION  TO  FRANCE          127 

French  mission  in  order  that  his  democratic  and 
decentralizing  theories  might  not  interfere  to  thwart 
the  drafting  of  a  "strong"  Constitution.  Jefferson's 
correspondence,  however,  furnishes  no  support  for 
such  a  view.  He  realized  the  necessity  for  a  cen 
tral  control  over  our  commerce  and  our  foreign  rela 
tions.  On  the  very  eve  of  his  departure  for  France 
he  wrote  from  Boston  to  James  Madison:  "I  find 
the  conviction  growing  strongly  that  nothing  can 
preserve  our  confederacy  unless  the  bonds  of  union 
be  strengthened."  This  was  after  a  visit  to  the 
principal  towns  of  the  New  England  States  to  study 
their  commerce. 

Jefferson  also  found  himself  is  substantial  agree 
ment  with  the  new  Constitution  when  it  reached 
him  in  Paris  in  finished  form.  In  a  long  letter  to 
Madison,  written  December  20, 1787,  he  commended 
the  security  of  the  Federal  Government  from  inter 
ference  by  the  State  Legislatures,  the  grant  of  the 
taxing  power  to  Congress,  the  division  of  the  Na 
tional  Government  into  its  three  great  departments, 
the  election  of  the  House  of  Representatives  by 
popular  vote,  the  equal  representation  of  the  States 
in  the  Senate,  the  voting  in  both  Houses  by  indi 
viduals  and  not  by  States,  the  veto  power  of  the 
President  (though  he  would  like  to  have  seen  it 
exercised  in  conjunction  with  the  judiciary),  and 
"many  other  good  things  of  far  less  moment."  He 
repeated  his  assertion  in  a  letter  to  Francis  Hopkin- 


128  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

son,  March  13,  1789:  "I  approved  from  the  first 
moment  the  great  mass  of  what  is  in  the  new  Con 
stitution." 

What  Jefferson  found  amiss  in  the  Constitution 
was,  first  of  all,  that  it  did  not  contain  a  Bill  of 
Rights  guaranteeing  to  every  citizen  such  funda 
mental  liberties  as  freedom  of  speech  and  religion, 
habeas  corpus,  trial  by  jury,  the  right  of  petition,  and 
the  like.  Even  in  a  democratic  government,  con 
ducted  wholly  by  the  people's  representatives,  Jef 
ferson  still  thought  these  rights  should  be  explicitly 
safeguarded  and  not  merely  left  to  be  inferred.  The 
second  point  that  Jefferson  objected  to  was  the  re- 
eligibility  of  officers,  especially  the  President,  "who 
might  be  transformed  by  successive  reflections, 
which  he  would  be  tempted  to  secure  by  foul  means, 
if  fair  means  failed,  into  a  virtual  dictator."  In  a 
postscript  Jefferson  thought  it  might  be  well,  in 
view  of  "the  instability  of  our  laws,"  if  the  Con 
stitution  provided  that  a  year  must  expire  between 
the  engrossing  of  a  bill  and  its  passage,  or  in  case  of 
"urgency"  that  a  tiwo-thirds  vote  instead  of  a  bare 
majority  should  be  necessary. 

Despite  these  objections  to  the  Constitution 
(which  are  much  less  serious  than  those  of  Hamil 
ton,  who  is  reckoned  among  its  "champions")  Jef 
ferson  wanted  the  Constitution  to  be  adopted  by 
the  necessary  nine  States  "in  order  to  insure  what 
was  good  in  it,"  while  the  other  four  States  should 


THE  MISSION  TO  FRANCE          129 

hold  off  until  a  newly  assembled  convention  added 
the  desired  amendments.  He  soon  came  over  to 
the  "Massachusetts  plan,"  however,  of  ratification 
with  the  recommendation  to  Congress  of  further 
amendment.  "I  learn  with  great  pleasure  the  prog 
ress  of  the  new  Constitution/7  he  wrote  to  Colonel 
Carrington  in  May,  1788;  "the  general  adoption 
is  to  be  prayed  for,  and  I  wait  with  great  anxiety 
the  news  from  Maryland  and  South  Carolina,  which 
have  decided  [on  ratification]  before  this;  and  with 
[anxiety]  that  Virginia,  now  in  session,  may  give 
the  ninth  vote  of  approbation.  There  could  then 
be  no  doubt  of  North  Carolina,  New  York,  and 
New  Hampshire.  .  .  .  We  should  give  Rhode 
Island  time.  I  cannot  conceive  but  that  she  will 
come  to  rights  in  the  long  run.  Force  in  whatever 
form  would  be  a  dangerous  precedent."  The  "gen 
eral  adoption"  was  secured,  Rhode  Island  finally 
came  in,  and  the  bill  of  rights  was  added  in  the 
first  ten  amendments,  passed  in  the  first  session  of 
Congress  and  ratified  by  the  States.  The  indefinite 
reeligibility  of  the  President  was  not  forbidden  by 
law,  but  Washington  and  Jefferson  set  the  exam 
ple  of  retirement  from  the  office  after  the  second 
term,  which  has  been  followed  to  this  day. 

The  radicalism  of  Jefferson's  democracy  comes 
out  more  strongly  in  the  correspondence  of  his 
Paris  days  than  at  any  other  time  of  his  life.  His 
contact  with  the  courts  of  Europe  only  confirmed 


130  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

in  him  the  opinion  of  the  happiness  of  the  American 
republic.  "My  God!"  he  wrote  to  Monroe  in  the 
summer  of  1788,  "how  little  do  my  countrymen 
know  what  precious  blessings  they  are  in  possession 
of,  and  which  no  other  people  on  earth  enjoy." 
He  found  the  French  people  "ground  to  powder  by 
the  vices  of  their  form  of  government."  "Of 
20,000,000  people  supposed  to  be  in  France,"  he 
writes  to  a  friend  in  Philadelphia,  "I  am  of  opinion 
there  are  19,000,000  more  wretched,  more  accursed 
in  every  circumstance  of  human  existence  than  the 
most  conspicuously  wretched  individual  in  the 
whole  United  States."  Kings  he  thought  the  bane 
of  their  people.  There  was  not  a  crowned  head  in 
Europe,  he  wrote  to  Washington,  "whose  talents  or 
merits  would  entitle  him  to  be  elected  a  vestryman 
in  any  parish  in  America."  There  was  scarcely 
an  evil  in  Europe,  he  said,  which  might  not  be  traced 
to  their  kin  as  its  source,  nor  a  good  which  was  not 
derived  from  the  "small  fibres  of  republicanism  ex 
isting  among  them."  If  all  the  evils  that  could 
arise  under  a  republican  form  of  government  from 
now  till  the  day  of  judgment  could  be  weighed 
against  the  evils  which  France  suffered  in  a  week 
or  England  in  a  month  from  its  monarchical  gov 
ernment,  the  scales  would  incline  in  favor  of  the 
former.  No  race  of  kings  had  ever  produced  more 
than  one  man  of  common  sense  in  twenty  genera 
tions.  The  best  behavior  of  kings  was  to  leave 


THE  MISSION  TO  FRANCE          131 

things  alone:  wherever  they  meddled  it  was  to  do 
harm.  Of  course,  many  of  these  sentiments  are 
ridiculous  exaggerations.  When  Jefferson  wrote 
them  Frederick  the  Great  had  been  dead  less  than 
two  years ! 

The  same  suspicion  of  anything  approaching  arbi 
trary  power  or  despotic  government  led  Jefferson  to 
condone  revolution  in  words  which  have  often  been 
quoted  to  prove  that  he  was  little  better  than  an 
anarchist.  Shays's  Rebellion  in  Massachusetts  in 
1786-7  did  not  seem  to  him  ominous.  It  was  only 
a  proof  that  the  people  had  "liberty  enough,"  and 
he  would  not  have  had  them  have  less.  "If  the 
happiness  of  the  mass  of  the  people  can  be  secured 
at  the  expense  of  a  little  tempest  now  and  then,  or 
even  of  a  little  blood,"  he  wrote  Doctor  Stiles,  the 
president  of  Yale  College,  in  acknowledging  an 
honorary  degree,  "it  will  be  a  precious  purchase. 
Malo  libertatem  periculosam  quam  quietam  servitu- 
tem!"  To  others  also  he  "talked  some  very  bad 
nonsense"  about  seditious  uprisings,  declaring  that 
no  country  should  be  too  long  without  a  revolution; 
that  no  country  could  be  safe  unless  its  rulers  were 
warned  from  time  to  time  that  the  people  possessed 
the  power  and  spirit  of  resistance;  that  between 
a  government  without  newspapers  or  newspapers 
without  a  government  he  would  not  hesitate  a 
moment  to  prefer  the  latter;  that  the  lives  lost  in  a 
century  or  two  in  such  a  good  cause  as  rebellions 


132  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

to  tyranny  mattered  little.  "God  forbid  that  we 
should  ever  be  twenty  years  without  such  a  rebel 
lion!"  he  cried.  "The  tree  of  liberty  must  be  re 
freshed  from  time  to  time  with  the  blood  of  patriots 
and  tyrants.  It  is  its  natural  manure."  We  should 
not  take  these  "wild  and  whirling  words"  more  seri 
ously  perhaps  than  Jefferson  himself  took  Shays's 
Rebellion.  They  were  rather  a  philosophical  dogma 
with  him  (after  the  manner  of  the  political  theorists 
of  the  eighteenth  century)  than  a  sober  plan  of 
public  conduct.  At  any  rate,  in  his  long  life  of 
service  to  his  State  and  nation,  which  covered  not 
one  but  three  spans  of  "twenty  years,"  Jefferson 
never  planned  or  sustained  any  "rebellion"  except 
the  great  revolution  which  accomplished  the  inevita- 
able  political  severance  with  Great  Britain. 

Neither  did  Jefferson  learn  his  radicalism  in 
France.  To  represent  him,  as  William  E.  Curtis 
does,  for  example,  as  returning  from  Paris  infected 
by  the  "frenzy  of  Jacobinism,"  is  a  grotesque  per 
version  of  the  truth.  There  were  no  "Jacobins"  in 
evidence  in  France  when  Jefferson  was  there.  The 
Reign  of  Terror  was  as  undreamed  of  in  1789  as 
the  despotism  of  Napoleon.  Jefferson's  associations 
were  all  with  the  moderate  liberals  whom  the  Jaco 
bins  later  sent  to  the  guillotine  when  they  could 
catch  them.  Camille  Desmoulins,  who  let  loose  the 
fury  of  the  people  of  Paris  on  the  Bastile,  declared 
in  1789  that  there  were  not  ten  republicans  in 


THE  MISSION  TO  FRANCE          133 

France  besides  himself.  Jefferson's  radicalism  was 
far  more  advanced  than  that  of  his  Parisian  friends, 
and  if  there  was  any  "infection"  it  was  rather  they 
who  got  it  from  him.  We  cannot  imagine  Mounier 
or  Lafayette  talking  of  kings  the  way  Jefferson  did. 
If  he  had  learned  such  language  from  anybody  it 
was  from  Patrick  Henry  and  Thomas  Paine,  and 
perhaps  those  hardy  Puritan  adversaries  of  the 
Stuart  "man  of  blood"  a  hundred  years  before. 
Jefferson's  "democracy"  was  based  less  on  the 
reading  of  Rousseau  than  on  the  behavior  of 
George  III. 

In  the  summer  of  1789,  while  Mirabeau  was  la 
boring  with  voice  and  pen  to  guide  the  titanic  forces 
of  the  French  Revolution  into  the  channels  of  broad 
national  reform,  Jefferson  asked  for  leave  of  absence 
to  return  to  America  for  private  and  domestic  rea 
sons.  He  had  left  Monticello  intending  to  be  ab 
sent  for  two  years,  and  had  been  away  five.  His 
affairs  needed  his  personal  attention,  and  he  wanted 
to  have  his  daughters  back  among  American  com 
panions — especially  as  the  elder,  Martha,  had  ex 
pressed  the  desire  to  take  the  veil  and  spend  her 
life  in  a  French  convent.  Jefferson's  request  was 
granted,  and  he  left  Havre  on  October  8,  1789,  send 
ing  back  to  Necker  from  the  deck  of  his  ship,  like  a 
Parthian  shot,  his  last  plea  for  the  admission  of 
American  salted  meats  into  the  French  kingdom. 
He  landed  at  Norfolk  on  November  23,  after  the 


134  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

exciting  dangers  of  storm?  collision,  and  fire  within 
the  capes  of  Chesapeake  Bay.  After  a  short  visit 
with  his  brother-in-law,  Mr.  Eppes,  at  his  country- 
seat  in  Chesterfield,  Jefferson  was  back  at  Monti- 
cello,  amid  jubilant  demonstrations  of  welcome 
from  his  slaves  and  household,  to  celebrate  the  fes 
tivities  of  the  Christmas  season. 


CHAPTER  VI 
IN  WASHINGTON'S  CABINET 

Our  country  is  too  large  to  have  all  its  affairs  directed  by  a  single  gov 
ernment.  ...  And  I  do  verily  believe  that  if  the  principle  were  to 
prevail  of  a  common  law  being  in  force  in  the  U.  S.  .  .  .  it  would  be 
come  the  most  corrupt  government  on  the  earth.  (Jefferson  to  Gideon 
Granger,  August  13,  1800.) 

DURING  the  early  summer  days  of  1789,  while  Jef 
ferson  was  intently  following  the  debates  of  the 
National  Assembly  of  France  from  the  galleries  of 
the  hall  at  Versailles,  George  Washington  and  the 
first  Congress  of  the  United  States  under  the  new 
Constitution  were  setting  in  motion  the  wheels  of 
government  of  the  American  Republic. 

For  the  important  post  of  secretary  of  state 
Washington's  choice  fell  on  Jefferson.  "When  I 
arrived  in  Norfolk,"  writes  the  latter  to  the  charge 
d'affaires  left  behind  at  Paris,  "I  saw  myself  in  the 
newspapers  nominated  to  that  office."  The  personal 
letter  of  the  President  reached  him  at  Eppington, 
on  his  way  to  Monticello,  in  December.  "  I  received 
it  with  real  regret,"  says  Jefferson  in  his  Memoir; 
"my  wish  was  to  return  to  Paris  when  I  had  left  my 
household  establishment  as  if  there  myself,  and  to 
see  the  end  of  the  Revolution,  which  I  then  thought 

135 


136  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

would  be  certainly  and  happily  closed  within  less 
than  a  year.  ...  In  my  answer  of  December 
15,  I  expressed  these  dispositions  candidly  to  the 
President  .  .  .  but  assured  him  that  if  it  was 
believed  I  could  be  more  useful  in  the  administra- 
ation  of  the  government,  I  would  sacrifice  my  own 
inclination  without  hesitation."  A  second  letter 
from  Washington,  strongly  urging  the  acceptance 
of  the  nomination,  overcame  Jefferson's  reluctance. 
He  only  asked  to  be  allowed  to  remain  at  Mon- 
ticello  long  enough  to  attend  to  the  affairs  which 
had  brought  him  over  from  Paris.  On  March 
1,  1790,  he  left  Monticello,  and,  after  pausing  in 
Philadelphia  to  visit  the  venerable  Franklin,  who 
was  then  on  his  death-bed,  he  reached  the  seat  of 
government  in  New  York  on  the  21st  of  March. 
The  second  session  of  Congress  was  already  over 
two  months  old.  John  Jay,  the  foreign  secretary 
of  the  old  Congress  of  the  Confederation,  who  had 
agreed  to  hold  over  until  Jefferson's  arrival,  had  a 
large  mass  of  accumulated  business  waiting  for  him. 
The  State  Department  was  not  then  the  highly 
organized  and  complex  institution  that  it  is  to-day, 
with  its  four  assistant  secretaries,  its  thousands  of 
clerks,  its  law  counsellor,  its  diplomatic  and  consular 
bureaus,  its  divisions  of  citizenship,  appointments, 
trade  relations,  archives,  rolls,  and  library.  One 
assistant  and  one  translator  were  all  the  secretary's 
staff  in  Jefferson's  day.  There  was  considerable 


IN  WASHINGTON'S  CABINET        137 

uncertainty,  too,  as  to  just  what  matters  came  under 
the  department's  authority,  but  it  was  the  general 
impression  that,  in  addition  to  foreign  affairs,  it 
should  have  charge  of  whatever  domestic  business 
did  not  fall  distinctly  under  the  heads  of  war  and 
finance.  Washington  assured  Jefferson,  who  was 
rather  alarmed  at  the  prospective  demands  of  the 
office,  that  the  duties  would  probably  not  be  so 
arduous  and  multifarious  as  he  imagined;  and  that 
if  the  domestic  business  should  prove  burdensome, 
"a  further  arrangement  or  division  of  the  office 
could  be  made."  An  examination  of  the  rather 
uninteresting  list  of  "domestic"  subjects  on  which 
Jefferson  gave  the  President  his  written  opinion  as 
secretary  of  state  shows  how  wide  the  range  of  his 
activities  was,  and  how  imperfect  was  the  delimita 
tion  of  the  duties  of  the  members  of  the  cabinet. 
To-day  a  secretary  of  state  does  not  publish  his 
opinions  on  finance,  nor  a  secretary  of  the  navy 
advise  on  the  management  of  the  post-office,  but 
Jefferson  reported,  among  other  matters,  on  the 
validity  of  Indian  land  grants  made  by  the  State  of 
Georgia,  on  the  payment  of  soldiers'  accounts,  on 
the  right  of  the  President  to  veto  a  bill  fixing  the 
residence  of  Congress,  on  Indian  trade,  on  the  for 
eign  debt,  on  the  establishment  of  a  bank  of  the 
United  States,  on  the  disposition  of  western  lands, 
and  on  the  encouragement  of  the  useful  arts.  Under 
the  Confederation  there  had  been  a  secretary  of 


138  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

foreign  affairs,  but  the  new  Congress  judged — by  a 
pardonable  inference  from  the  negligibility  of  our 
country  in  the  European  councils  since  the  peace — 
that  our  foreign  diplomacy  could  be  taken  care  of 
without  much  additional  burden  by  the  secretary 
who  managed  a  large  number  of  home  affairs.  The 
work  that  was  then  thought  to  be  incidental  came 
soon  to  be  absorbing  and  all-important,  for  the 
very  slight  and  occasional  contact  between  our 
national  and  our  State  governments  has  made  a 
secretary  of  state  for  home  affairs  (after  the  English 
model)  almost  a  superfluity,  while  our  foreign  rela 
tions  have  grown  in  delicacy  and  complexity  until 
the  secretary  of  state  has  become  the  most  impor 
tant  member  of  the  President's  cabinet. 

Of  all  our  diplomatists,  after  the  peerless  Frank 
lin,  Jefferson  was  the  best  fitted  for  this  post.  He 
was  more  supple  than  Jay,  more  tactful  than  Adams, 
more  resourceful  than  Pinckney,  more  constructive 
than  Morris.  His  five  years  residence  in  Paris,  the 
centre  of  European  diplomacy,  had  furnished  his 
receptive  mind  with  a  full  knowledge  of  the  currents 
of  political  thought  and  commercial  ambitions  in 
the  Old  World.  His  preference  for  France  was  ac 
knowledged,  and  it  arose  from  a  variety  of  causes. 
First  of  all,  gratitude.  He  could  see  no  justice,  as 
he  wrote  Madison  in  1789,  in  viewing  two  nations 
with  identical  feelings  when  one  had  spent  her  blood 
and  money  to  save  us,  while  the  other  had  "moved 


IN  WASHINGTON'S  CABINET        139 

heaven  and  earth  and  hell  to  exterminate  us  in  war, 
insulted  us  in  all  her  councils  in  peace,  shut  her 
doors  to  us  in  every  port  where  her  interests  would 
admit  it,  and  libelled  us  among  foreign  nations." 
The  memory  of  the  "ungracious  notice,"  which 
George  III  and  his  Queen  had  given  him  on  the  oc 
casion  of  his  visit  to  London  in  1786  to  confer  with 
John  Adams,  threw  into  bright  relief  the  courtesy 
and  amiability  of  the  French  Court  and  ministers. 
He  was  convinced,  too,  that  the  cultivation  of  closer 
commercial  relations  with  France  would  not  only 
open  wide  markets  for  our  products  among  her 
25,000,000  inhabitants,  but  would  also  force  Great 
Britain  to  modify  her  harsh  navigation  acts  against 
us  if  she  wished  to  keep  her  just  share  of  our  trade. 
In  the  French  restrictions  on  our  commerce  Jefferson 
saw  only  a  mistaken  economic  policy,  but  in  the 
British  navigation  acts  he  saw  a  deliberate  purpose 
to  monopolize  and  control  our  commerce. 

Then,  again,  Jefferson's  genuine  passion  for 
democracy  made  him  hail  the  French  Revolution  as 
the  dawn  of  a  new  era  in  Europe.  He  hated  kings 
and  aristocracies.  "I  continue  eternally  attached 
to  the  principles  of  your  Revolution,"  he  wrote  to 
Brissot  de  Warville  in  May,  1793,  even  after  the 
news  of  the  king's  execution  and  the  declaration  of 
war  against  England  had  reached  America.  And  to 
Pendleton  he  wrote:  "The  success  of  the  French 
Revolution  will  ensure  the  progress  of  liberty  in 


140  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

Europe  and  its  preservation  here."  He  was  looking 
with  great  anxiety,  during  his  whole  term  of  office 
as  secretary  of  state,  for  the  establishment  of  the 
new  government  in  France,  convinced  that  it  would 
be  the  purveyor  of  liberty  to  all  the  nations  of  the 
Old  World.  Finally,  to  these  reasons  of  public  con 
sideration  must  be  added  Jefferson's  personal  "com 
patibility  of  temper"  with  things  French.  He  liked 
their  art  and  music,  their  wit  and  grace,  their  clarity 
of  thought  and  courtesy  of  speech,  their  cheerful 
ness,  their  language,  their  books,  their  dress,  and 
their  wines. 

For  all  this,  it  is  most  unjust  to  say,  as  McMaster 
does,  that  "Jefferson  was  at  all  times  more  French 
than  American."  His  preference  for  France  was 
rather  in  comparison  with  England  than  with  his 
native  land.  No  one  can  read  the  hundreds  of  let 
ters  which  Jefferson  wrote  from  Paris  to  his  friends 
in  America  and  be  left  with  any  doubt  where  his 
affections  were.  "I  sincerely  wish  you  may  find  it 
convenient  to  come  here,"  he  wrote  to  Monroe  in 
June,  1785*  «  *  *  "It  will  make  you  adore  your 
own  country,  its  soil,  its  climate,  its  equality,  lib 
erty,  laws,  people,  and  manners."  He  is  never 
tired  of  contrasting  the  free  opportunities  of  the 
new  American  Republic  with  the  caste  and  privilege 
in  European  society.  And  if  he  hails  the  France 
of  1789  with  enthusiasm  it  is  first  of  all  because  he 
sees  promise  that  she  may  become  free  like  us. 


IN  WASHINGTON'S  CABINET        141 

"The  French  nation,"  he  writes  to  Washington  in 
December,  1788,  "has  been  awakened  by  our  Revo 
lution.  They  feel  their  strength,  they  are  enlight 
ened,  their  lights  are  spreading,  and  they  will  not 
retrograde."  Jefferson  has  been  represented  by 
many  historians  and  biographers,  from  John  Mar 
shall  down,  as  applying  the  touchstone  of  French 
(and  even  "Jacobinical")  principles  as  the  test  of 
true  Americanism.  The  exact  opposite  is  the  truth. 
He  tested  the  French  Revolution  by  the  principles 
of  the  American  Declaration  of  Independence,  and 
felt,  as  he  wrote  Edward  Rutledge,  in  1791,  that  the 
success  or  failure  of  those  principles  in  France 
meant  their  confirmation  or  their  weakening  in 
America. 

The  foreign  questions  with  which  Jefferson  had 
to  deal  as  secretary  of  state  were  bequeathed  to 
him  from  the  days  of  the  Confederation.  They 
arose  almost  entirely  out  of  the  diplomacy  of  the 
American  Revolution  and  the  peace  negotiations  of 
1783,  and  were  referable  to  three  main  categories: 
the  attainment  of  a  suitable  commercial  status  with 
the  nations  of  Europe,  the  adjustment  of  our  rela 
tions  with  neighboring  possessions  of  European 
countries  on  this  continent,  and  the  expediency  of 
our  participation  or  even  our  partisanship  in  the 
great  cycle  of  European  wars  precipitated  by  the 
French  Revolution.  Not  one  of  these  three  ques 
tions  was  settled  during  Jefferson's  occupancy  of  the 


142  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

secretaryship  of  state.  Not  even  one  of  the  treaties 
marking  the  first  steps  in  their  eventual  settle 
ment  was  signed.  But,  nevertheless,  Jefferson  made 
valuable  contributions  in  his  state  papers  to  the 
solution  of  them  all.1 

With  France  our  relations  were  naturally  friendly 
when  the  new  government  was  inaugurated  at  New 
York.  We  had  been  her  ally  for  more  than  ten 
years.  Her  aid  to  us  in  our  Revolution,  from  what 
ever  motive  rendered,  had  been  the  indispensable 
condition  of  the  attainment  of  our  independence. 
Moreover,  France  had  no  possessions  on  the  main 
land  of  North  America,  and  no  desire  for  any.  She 
had  already  made  some  concessions  to  our  com 
merce.  What  further  demands  we  wished  to  make 
upon  her  ministers  we  readily  postponed  in  1789,  to 
watch  with  genuine  sympathy  the  progress  of  her 
great  Revolution.  Serious  trouble  between  America 
and  France  began  only  in  the  second  administration 
of  Washington,  with  the  kindling  of  a  general  Euro 
pean  war. 

It  was  not  thus,  however,  in  our  relations  with 
England  and  Spain.  They  were  both  our  neighbors 
on  the  American  mainland  and  both  unfriendly  to 

1  Jefferson  resigned  the  secretaryship  at  the  close  of  1793.  The 
Jay  Treaty  with  England  was  concluded  in  1794-5,  the  Pinckney 
Treaty  with  Spain  in  1795,  and  the  convention  with  Napoleon  in 
1800.  These  treaties  were  the  preliminary  and  partial  adjustment 
of  questions  that  were  not  finally  settled  until  the  close  of  the  war 
between  England  and  Napoleon  (1815)  and  the  elimination  of  Spain 
from  the  Floridas  (1819). 


IN  WASHINGTON'S  CABINET        143 

the  new  republic.  The  British  refused  to  evacuate 
rich  fur-posts  on  the  Great  Lakes,  which  lay  within 
the  territory  they  had  abandoned  to  the  United 
States  in  the  treaty  of  peace.  They  carried  off 
negroes,  mostly  from  Virginia,  in  violation  of  the 
treaty  stipulations.  They  refused  to  open  their 
West  Indian  ports  to  our  trade,  and  would  not  even 
recognize  the  new  nation  by  sending  us  a  minister. 
Washington  instructed  Gouverneur  Morris,  our 
agent  in  London,  to  seek  satisfaction  on  these 
points,  but  Pitt  was  obdurate.  When  at  last  the 
British  Government  condescended  to  send  Mr. 
Hammond  to  the  United  States  as  minister  in  1791, 
Jefferson  took  up  the  negotiations  with  him  over 
the  fur-posts,  the  negroes,  commerce,  and  the  debts 
due  English  merchants.  In  a  long  note  to  Ham 
mond,  dated  May  29,  1792,  Jefferson  reviewed  the 
whole  course  of  the  dispute  between  Great  Britain 
and  the  United  States  since  the  peace  with  modera 
tion  and  "sweet  reasonableness/ '  showing  by  an 
array  of  legal  and  historical  proof  that  Congress  had 
scrupulously  fulfilled  its  treaty  obligations  in  recom 
mending  the  States  to  place  no  impediments  in  the 
way  of  the  collection  of  the  British  debts,  whereas 
the  British,  after  having  agreed  by  the  same  treaty 
to  withdraw  their  garrisons  from  all  the  posts  in  the 
United  States  "with  all  convenient  speed,"  had 
shown  and  still  showed,  after  nine  years,  not  the 
least  sign  of  complying.  If  laws  had  been  passed 


144  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

by  certain  States  to  relieve  debtors  by  extending 
the  time  of  payment  or  issuing  paper  currency,  they 
were  not  dictated  by  any  hostility  to  England,  but 
by  the  necessity  of  preserving  the  business  and  prop 
erty  of  the  States  from  utter  bankruptcy  and  con 
fiscation.  The  precious  metals  had  been  drained 
out  of  the  country  in  payment  of  arms,  munitions, 
and  other  necessaries  from  Europe,  so  that  the  huge 
debt  could  not  be  paid  in  coin.  "Even  if  the  whole 
soil  of  the  United  States  had  been  offered  for  sale 
for  ready  coin,"  said  Jefferson,  "it  would  not  have 
raised  as  much  as  would  have  satisfied  this  stipu 
lation."  Furthermore,  the  British,  by  their  illegal 
retention  of  the  rich  fur-posts,  were  helping  to  de 
prive  the  States  of  the  very  money  which  might 
enable  them  to  pay  the  debts.  Not  arbitrary  re 
prisals,  but  orderly  prosecution  through  the  courts, 
was  the  proper  way  of  obtaining  redress  if  there  was 
any  unlawful  obstruction  of  justice  toward  British 
creditors.  The  note  had  no  immediate  effect  on 
England's  behavior,  but  it  remains  one  of  the 
ablest  diplomatic  documents  in  our  archives.  It  set 
a  standard  for  fairness  of  spirit,  thoroughness  of  in 
formation,  and  cogency  of  reasoning  that  subsequent 
secretaries  of  state  have  felt  it  an  honorable  task 
to  emulate. 

Jefferson's  unbounded  confidence  in  the  destiny 
of  the  American  people  to  expand  and  fill  the  conti 
nent  made  him  the  most  ardent  champion  in  the 


IN  WASHINGTON'S  CABINET        145 

cabinet  of  our  rights  and  interests  in  the  West — a 
more  ardent  champion,  even,  than  President  Wash 
ington  himself.  He  looked  with  alarm  on  any 
movement  from  within  or  without  the  republic  that 
threatened  or  thwarted  this  expansion.  "I  fear 
from  an  expression  in  your  letter/ '  he  wrote  to 
Archibald  Stuart  from  Paris  in  January,  1786,  "that 
the  people  of  Kentucke  think  of  separating  not  only 
from  Virginia  (in  which  they  are  right),  but  also 
from  the  confederacy.  I  own  I  should  think  that 
a  most  calametous  event,  and  such  a  one  as  every 
good  citizin  on  both  sides  should  set  himself  against. 
Our  present  federal  limits  are  not  too  large  for  good 
government,  nor  will  the  increase  of  votes  in  Con 
gress  produce  any  ill  effect.  On  the  contrary,  it  will 
drown  the  little  divisions  at  present  existing  there. 
Our  confederacy  must  be  viewed  as  the  nest  from 
which  all  America,  North  and  South,  is  to  be  peo 
pled.  .  .  .  The  navigation  of  the  Mississippi  we 
must  have." 

No  one  in  America,  now  that  Franklin  was  dead, 
appreciated  so  fully  as  Jefferson  both  how  necessary 
the  free  navigation  of  the  Mississippi  was  to  the 
security  of  the  new  union,  and  how  difficult  it  would 
be  to  gain  the  acknowledgment  of  our  right  to  the 
free  navigation  of  the  river  from  Spain.  It  was  by 
far  the  most  important  diplomatic  problem  of  Wash 
ington's  administration,  and  Jefferson  was  the  only 
man  in  the  cabinet  to  fully  realize  its  importance. 


146  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

He  had  had  ample  chance  to  study  the  disposition 
of  Spain  in  his  five  years'  residence  at  the  Court  of 
France.  He  knew  how  Spain  had  entered  the 
Revolutionary  War  in  1779  in  order  to  recover  her 
lost  province  of  Florida  and  her  lost  fortress  of 
Gibraltar  from  Great  Britain;  how  she  had  resisted 
Vergennes's  appeals  to  join  in  the  fight  against 
England  until  he  threatened  to  dissolve  the  "  Fam 
ily  Compact"  of  the  Bourbon  Kings  concluded  in 
1761;  how  she  had  hated  to  give  even  indirect  aid 
to  colonies  revolting  against  their  absent  monarch, 
when  the  southern  hemisphere  of  America  was 
filled  with  her  own  distant  and  ill-governed  depen 
dencies;  how  jealous  she  was  lest  a  strong  nation 
should  grow  up  on  the  eastern  bank  of  the  Missis 
sippi  to  confront  her  dominion  on  the  western  bank 
and  to  dispute  the  commerce  of  the  great  highway 
and  the  possession  of  New  Orleans.  Spain  had 
made  no  alliance  with  us,  as  France  had,  on  entering 
the  war,  nor  had  she  been  a  party  to  our  treaty  of 
peace  with  England.  Her  minister,  Florida  Blanca, 
had  declared  that  there  was  "a  sort  of  equality  of 
enmity"  in  the  relations  of  England  and  America 
to  Spain,  which  made  it  "  difficult  to  desire  that 
either  side  should  win."  When,  therefore,  the 
American  commissioners  at  Paris,  departing  from 
the  letter  of  their  instructions,  concluded  peace  with 
Great  Britain  alone,  and  France  after  some  righteous 
protest  acquiesced  in  the  general  pacification,  Spain 


IN  WASHINGTON'S  CABINET        147 

had  to  be  content  with  the  recovery  of  Florida, 
leaving  her  great  Mediterranean  fortress  in  the 
hands  of  England.  Partly  to  take  revenge  on  the 
United  States  for  precipitating  the  peace,  partly 
to  build  up  a  powerful  and  exclusive  empire  on  the 
Gulf  of  Mexico,  Spain  promptly  closed  the  Missis 
sippi  to  our  western  settlers  and  even  arrested  our 
traders  on  the  eastern  bank  of  the  river  above  the 
Florida  boundary. 

Jefferson,  as  an  expansionist,  a  patriot,  and  a 
Virginia  "frontiersman,"  was  opposed  to  yielding 
our  rights  on  the  Mississippi.  He  agreed  with  his 
predecessor  at  Paris,  Benjamin  Franklin,  who  said 
that  a  neighbor  might  as  well  ask  him  to  sell  his 
street  door  as  to  part  with  a  drop  of  the  waters  of 
the  Mississippi.  "The  disposition  of  Congress  to 
shut  up  the  Mississippi,"  wrote  Jefferson  to  Madi 
son  from  Paris,  "gives  me  serious  apprehension  of  the 
severance  of  the  eastern  and  western  parts  of  our 
confederacy."  When  he  became  secretary  of  state  in 
1790  he  pressed  the  matter  with  vigor.  On  August 
22  he  sent  to  Carmichael,  our  minister  at  Madrid, 
certain  "heads  of  considerations  on  the  navigation 
of  the  Mississippi."  It  was  our  right,  he  claimed, 
and  not  a  favor  from  Spain.  "More  than  half  the 
territory  of  the  United  States,"  he  wrote,  "is  on  the 
waters  of  that  River.  Two  hundred  thousand  of 
our  citizens  are  settled  on  them.  .  .  .  These  have 
no  other  outlet  for  their  tobacco,  rice,  corn,  hemp, 


148  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

lumber,  house  timber,  ship  timber.  We  have  hith 
erto  respected  the  indecision  of  Spain,  because  we 
wish  peace  and  because  our  western  citizens  have 
had  a  vent  at  home  for  their  productions.  A  sur 
plus  of  products  begins  now  to  demand  foreign 
markets." 

Jefferson  then  considered  the  actual  situation 
which  the  United  States  faced  of  either  having  to 
coerce  the  western  settlements  to  accept  their  own 
economic  ruin  or  to  abandon  them  to  Spain  (to 
which  they  were  anot  disposed");  or  to  join  them 
in  a  war  against  Spain  to  secure  their  economic 
freedom.  He  had  no  doubt  that  the  United  States 
would  choose  the  last  course.  And  he  begged 
Spain  to  make  the  wise  choice  now  of  a  permanently 
friendly  neighbor1  and  the  guarantee  of  the  peaceful 
possession  of  all  the  territory  west  of  the  Mississippi, 
by  voluntarily  ceding  to  the  United  States  the  ter 
ritories  to  the  east  of  the  river  [New  Orleans  and 
the  Floridas].  Needless  to  say,  the  Spanish  Govern 
ment  did  not  adopt  this  amicable  proposition  of 
Jefferson's.  Negotiations  dragged  on  until  he  was 
out  of  office.  It  was  not  until  1795  that  the  treaty 
concluded  by  Thomas  Pinckney  secured  us  even  a 

xThe  passage  in  Jefferson's  original  draft  is  interesting:  "Safer 
for  Spain  that  we  should  be  her  neighbor  than  England.  Conquest 
not  in  our  principles.  Inconsistent  with  our  government.  Not  our 
interest  to  cross  the  Miss,  for  ages.  And  will  never  be  our  interest 
to  remain  with  those  who  do."  We  bought  the  western  basin  of  the 
Mississippi  only  thirteen  years  after  this  was  written — and  Thomas 
Jefferson  was  the  purchaser ! 


IN  WASHINGTON'S  CABINET        149 

temporary  right  of  deposit  and  reshipment  at  New 
Orleans.  For  a  full  score  of  years  from  the  peace 
treaty  of  1783  to  the  purchase  of  Louisiana  and  the 
Island  of  New  Orleans  by  President  Jefferson  in 
1803  we  were  kept  on  the  verge  of  a  war  with  Spain 
over  the  navigation  of  the  Mississippi. 

Valuable  as  Jefferson's  services  were  in  his  nego 
tiations  with  foreign  countries,  and  important  as 
were  the  precedents  which  he  established  as  our 
first  secretary  of  state,  it  is  for  other  activities  and 
interests  that  he  is  chiefly  remembered  as  a  mem 
ber  of  Washington's  cabinet — just  as  during  his 
years  in  France  his  official  business  was  overshad 
owed  by  the  issues  of  the  approaching  Revolution. 
The  new  Constitution  of  the  United  States  abolished 
the  clumsy  and  inefficient  political  machinery  of 
the  Confederation  altogether.  Federal  government 
was  built  up  de  novo.  Organization,  which  is  the 
prior  condition  to  administration,  brought  with  it 
a  multitude  of  questions  bearing  on  the  relations  of 
the  different  departments  of  government  to  each 
other,  the  limits  of  executive  and  legislative  powers, 
the  interpretation  of  the  mandates  and  prohibitions 
of  the  Constitution,  and  the  reconciliation  of  pro 
jected  legislation  with  its  letter  and  spirit.  It  was 
not  to  be  expected  that  a  man  of  Thomas  Jefferson's 
philosophical  curiosity  and  practical  experience  in 
politics  should  renounce  an  active  part  in  these 
questions  in  order  to  devote  himself  to  the  technical 


150  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

duties  of  his  department.  Furthermore,  the  mem 
bers  of  the  cabinet  were  expected  and  invited  by  the 
President  to  furnish  him  advice  on  all  important 
measures  and  policies.  Washington  was  eminently 
cautious  and  deliberate.  Though  he  did  not  shun 
responsibility  or  darken  counsel  by  indecision,  he 
took  pains  to  learn  the  opinions  of  his  subordinates 
and  to  defer  to  them  so  far  as  possible.  As  com 
mander  of  the  armies  of  the  Revolution  he  heard 
patiently  and  weighed  carefully  the  advice  given 
in  the  council  of  his  generals.  As  President  he 
treated  his  cabinet  as  a  council,  supporting  the 
opinion  which  won  his  consent  or  casting  a  deciding 
vote  in  case  of  a  balance  of  opinion  among  the  four 
members.1 

We  have  seen  that  Jefferson  had  some  misgivings 
about  certain  details  of  the  Constitution  adopted  by 
the  fathers  at  Philadelphia  (as  what  American  pa 
triot  did  not !) ;  but  we  have  also  seen  that  he  was  a 
sincere  believer  in  the*  Constitution  as  a  whole,  and 
unreservedly  commended  its  chief  features,  such  as 
the  division  of  the  government  into  three  great 
branches,  the  "happy  compromise"  of  interests  be- 

1  Some  members  of  the  Constitutional  Convention  wanted  the 
President  limited  by  an  executive  council,  but  the  proposition  was 
defeated.  Charles  Pinckney  in  his  plan  of  government  spoke  of  the 
heads  of  departments  as  forming  a  "cabinet  council,"  whose  advice 
the  President  should  consult.  But  the  Constitution  mentions 
neither  " cabinet"  nor  "council."  It  does  not  even  require  the 
President  to  call  the  heads  of  the  departments  together  in  cabinet 
meetings.  The  cabinet  was  not  officially  recognized  in  our  system 
until  1907. 


IN  WASHINGTON'S  CABINET        151 

tween  the  large  and  the  small  States,  the  qualified 
veto  power  of  the  executive,  the  power  of  taxation. 
"I  would  wish  it  not  to  be  altered,"  he  wrote  in  a 
letter  from  Paris  to  Francis  Hopkinson,  March  13, 
1789,  "during  the  life  of  our  great  leader,  whose 
executive  talents  are  superior  to  those  I  believe  of 
any  man  in  the  world,  and  who  alone  by  the  author 
ity  of  his  name  and  the  confidence  reposed  in  his 
perfect  integrity,  is  fully  qualified  to  put  the  new 
government  so  under  way  as  to  secure  it  against 
the  efforts  of  opposition." 

Although  Jefferson  recognized  the  necessity  for  a 
Constitution  and  accepted  the  one  framed,  he  was 
nevertheless  solicitous  that  the  federal  power  cre 
ated  by  it  should  keep  strictly  within  the  letter  of 
the  law.  He  saw  in  the  institutions  of  township, 
county,  and  State,  in  close  touch  with  the  people, 
the  best  guarantees  of  democracy.  The  New  Eng 
land  town  meeting  he  thought  the  most  perfect  form 
of  government  in  America.  He  was  jealous  lest 
local  liberties  be  encroached  on  by  the  Federal  Gov 
ernment,  and  so  be  developed  insidiously  the  cen 
tralization  and  paternalism  which  he  considered  the 
curse  of  the  European  monarchies.  This  solicitude, 
which  was  shared  in  a  lesser  degree  by  his  kinsman 
and  colleague  in  the  cabinet,  Attorney-General 
Edmund  Randolph,  was  in  sharp  contrast  with  the 
bold,  aggressive  policy  of  the  secretary  of  the  trea 
sury,  Alexander  Hamilton,  who  advocated  the  en- 


152  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

largement  and  consolidation  of  the  central  power. 
Secretary  of  War  Knox  followed  Hamilton  almost 
slavishly.  And  Washington,  while  prizing  Jeffer 
son's  advice  highly,  and  attempting  to  hold  the 
balance  justly  between  the  two  "factions"  of  his 
cabinet,  inclined  more  and  more  to  the  views  of 
Hamilton.  This  condemned  Jefferson  finally  to 
the  role  of  the  "leader  of  the  opposition"  in  the 
cabinet. 

When  Jefferson  reached  New  York  in  March, 
1790,  to  take  his  seat  at  Washington's  council 
board,  the  policy  of  the  administration  was  well 
under  way.  Congress  was  in  the  midst  of  its  second 
session.  A  tariff  act  had  been  passed  to  provide  a 
national  revenue  and  incidentally  to  afford  protec 
tive  encouragement  to  American  manufacturers. 
The  executive  departments  had  been  organized. 
The  Supreme  Court  had  been  constituted,  consist 
ing  of  a  chief  justice  and  five  associate  justices,  with 
seventeen  subordinate  circuit  and  district  courts  in 
the  States.  And,  most  significant  of  all,  Alexander 
Hamilton,  at  the  head  of  the  treasury  department, 
was  fairly  launched  on  the  financial  programme 
which  split  cabinet,  Congress,  and  the  country  into 
the  opposing  parties  of  Federalists  and  Republicans. 

On  January  14,  1790,  while  Jefferson  was  still 
tarrying  at  Monticello,  Hamilton  presented  to  Con 
gress  his  first  Report  on  the  Public  Credit,  a  long 
document  which  Henry  Cabot  Lodge  ranks  second 


IN  WASHINGTON'S  CABINET        153 

only  in  importance  to  Lincoln's  Emancipation  Proc 
lamation  in  our  American  state  papers;  for  the  far- 
reaching  results  which  it  produced.  In  it  Hamilton 
urged  not  only  the  payment  in  full  of  the  face  value 
of  the  foreign  and  domestic  debt  of  the  United 
States  contracted  in  the  Revolution  and  under  the 
Confederation,  but  even  the  assumption  of  the 
State  debts  by  the  central  government — thus  creat 
ing  a  great  national  debt  of  some  seventy-five 
million  dollars,  held  by  the  capitalists  of  the  coun 
try,  and  assured  to  them  as  a  permanent  invest 
ment  by  the  provision  that  Congress  might  redeem 
no  more  than  two  per  cent  of  the  principal  annu 
ally.  To  Hamilton's  opponents  this  scheme  ap 
peared  like  simply  mortgaging  the  government  of 
the  United  States  to  the  capitalist  class,  extracting 
the  annual  interest  of  millions  of  dollars  on  the 
mortgage  from  the  toil  of  the  farmer,  the  artisan, 
and  the  merchant.  Hamilton  did  not  deny  that  his 
chief  object  was  to  rally  the  wealth  of  the  country 
to  the  support  of  the  government,  to  preserve  the 
credit  of  the  country  in  the  eyes  of  foreign  nations. 
As  far  back  as  1780,  when  the  paper  currency  of  the 
country  was  almost  worthless,  he  had  written,  as 
a  young  man  of  twenty-three,  to  the  experienced 
financier,  Robert  Morris:  "The  only  plan  that  can 
preserve  the  currency  is  one  which  will  make  it 
the  immediate  interest  of  the  moneyed  men  to 
co-operate  with  the  government  in  its  support." 


154  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

From  this  advocacy  of  a  partnership  between  capi 
tal  and  government  Hamilton  never  departed. 

The  contest  over  the  assumption  of  the  State 
debts,  the  hardest  part  of  the  Hamiltonian  pro 
gramme  to  put  through  Congress,  was  at  its  height 
when  Jefferson  arrived  in  New  York.  In  the  Anas, 
a  kind  of  scrap-book  thrown  together  nearly  thirty 
years  later  from  memoranda  of  conversations  and 
impressions  jotted  down  at  the  time,  Jefferson  gives 
a  lively  description  of  how  he  was  drawn  into  the 
controversy.  "So  high  were  the  feuds  excited  by 
this  subject  that  .  .  .  business  was  suspended. 
Congress  met  and  adjourned  from  day  to  day  with 
out  doing  anything,  the  parties  being  too  much  out 
of  temper  to  do  business  together.  The  Eastern 
members  particularly,  who,  with  Smith  from  South 
Carolina,  were  the  principal  gamblers  in  these  scenes, 
threatened  a  secession  and  dissolution.  Hamilton 
was  in  despair.  As  I  was  going  to  the  President's 
one  day,  I  met  him  in  the  street.  He  walked  me 
backward  and  forward  before  the  President's  door 
for  half  an  hour.  He  painted  pathetically  the  tem 
per  into  which  the  legislature  had  been  wrought,  the 
disgust  of  those  who  were  called  the  Creditor  states, 
the  danger  of  the  secession  of  their  members,  and 
the  separation  of  the  states.  He  observed  that  the 
members  of  the  administration  ought  to  act  in  con 
cert,  that  tho'  this  question  was  not  of  my  depart 
ment,  yet  a  common  duty  should  make  it  a  common 


IN  WASHINGTON'S  CABINET        155 

concern;  .  .  .  and  that  the  question  having  been 
lost  by  a  small  majority  only,  it  was  possible  that 
an  appeal  from  me  to  the  judgment  and  discretion 
of  some  of  my  friends  might  effect  a  change  in  the 
vote,  and  the  machine  of  government,  now  sus 
pended,  might  be  again  set  into  motion.  I  told  him 
I  was  really  a  stranger  to  the  whole  subject;  not 
having  yet  informed  myself  of  the  system  of  finances 
adopted,  I  knew  not  how  far  this  [assumption]  was 
a  necessary  sequence;  that  undoubtedly,  if  its  rejec 
tion  endangered  a  dissolution  of  our  union  at  this 
incipient  stage,  I  should  deem  that  the  most  unfor 
tunate  of  all  consequences,  to  avert  which  all  par 
tial  and  temporary  evils  should  be  yielded.  I  pro 
posed  to  him,  however,  to  dine  with  me  the  next  day, 
and  I  would  invite  another  friend  or  two,  bring 
them  into  conference  together,  and  I  thought  it  im 
possible  that  reasonable  men,  consulting  together 
coolly,  could  fail,  by  some  mutual  sacrifices  of 
opinion,  to  form  a  compromise  which  was  to  save 
the  union."  The  informal  diplomats  of  the  dinner- 
table  arranged  the  matter  satisfactorily.  Hamilton 
got  his  Southern  votes  for  assumption,  and  the  loca 
tion  of  the  capital  went  to  the  banks  of  the  Potomac. 
Later  on,  when  Jefferson  saw  the  full  significance 
of  Hamilton's  financial  programme,  and  realized  to 
his  horror  that  he  had  been  made  a  party  to  fixing 
the  " octopus"  of  the  money  power  on  the  govern 
ment,  he  complained  bitterly  that  he  had  been 


156  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

"duped"  by  Hamilton  and  "most  ignorantly  and 
innocently  been  made  to  hold  the  candle "  for  his 
nefarious  act.  At  the  time  the  bargain  was  made, 
however,  Jefferson  does  not  seem  to  have  had  any 
suspicion  of  deceitfulness  on  Hamilton's  part  or 
impropriety  in  his  own  behavior.  In  his  contempo 
raneous  correspondence  he  speaks  of  assumption  in 
a  disinterested  fashion  as  "one  of  those  questions 
which  present  great  inconveniences  whichever  way 
it  is  decided";  as  a  measure  "to  be  yielded  to  for 
the  sake  of  union  and  to  save  us  from  the  greatest 
of  all  calamities,  the  total  extinction  of  our  credit 
in  Europe";  and  as  "a  proposition  which  could  not 
be  totally  rejected  without  preventing  the  funding 
of  the  public  debt  altogether,  which  would  be  tanta 
mount  to  a  dissolution  of  the  government."  On  the 
day  before  the  bill  passed  he  wrote  approvingly  to 
Francis  Eppes,  his  brother-in-law:  "The  assumption 
of  the  state  debts  will,  I  believe,  be  agreed  to." 
These  quotations  make  clear  that  Jefferson,  in  so 
far  as  he  had  given  any  attention  to  the  question  of 
assumption,  was  not  at  any  serious  disagreement 
with  Hamilton,  and  give  some  color  to  the  charge 
of  his  hostile  biographers  that  he  was  inclined  to 
read  sinister  motives  into  the  acts  of  men  from 
whom  he  had  come  to  differ.  Jefferson  had  no 
cause  to  complain  of  the  assumption  bill.  He  had 
been  in  this  country  ever  since  the  policy  was 
broached  in  Hamilton's  first  Report.  He  was  an 


IN  WASHINGTON'S  CABINET        157 

astute  observer  of  current  opinion  and  a  close  stu 
dent  of  public  affairs.  If  he  was  "duped"  by  Ham 
ilton  in  1790  he  had  only  himself  to  blame. 

The  statement,  often  repeated,  that  Washington 
called  Jefferson  and  Hamilton  into  the  cabinet  as 
representatives  of  opposing  opinions,  so  that  he 
might  hear  both  sides  of  every  question  and  himself 
hold  the  balance  between  the  conflicting  opinions,  is 
not  true  to  fact.  The  two  men  probably  knew  each 
other  only  slightly,  though  both  had  been  occasional 
members  of  the  old  Congress  of  the  Confederation. 
They  could  never  have  been  congenial  friends  with 
their  total  disparity  in  tastes  and  temper,  but  there 
is  nothing  to  show  that  they  did  not  regard  each 
other  with  mutual  respect  when  they  first  met  at 
Washington's  cabinet  table.  Jefferson,  at  any  rate, 
had  written  from  Paris  in  1785  to  an  English  friend 
who  was  thinking  of  opening  a  lawsuit  for  the  re 
covery  of  confiscated  lands  in  New  York,  "to  apply 
to  Colo.  Hamilton,  who  was  an  aid  to  Genl  Washing 
ton,  and  is  now  very  eminent  at  the  bar  and  much 
to  be  relied  on."  Antagonism  developed  rapidly, 
however,  between  the  two  secretaries  after  their 
first  months  in  the  cabinet  together,  and  before  a 
year  had  passed  they  were  sure  to  be  found  pitted 
against  each  other  on  every  measure  proposed. 
Hamilton  had  the  advantage  of  being  earlier  on  the 
field  and  getting  his  measures  well  started  before 
Jefferson  appeared.  He  also  enjoyed  the  friend- 


158  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

ship  and  confidence  of  Washington  to  a  degree  not 
shared  by  any  other  man.  The  establishment  of  our 
finances  on  a  sound  basis  being  the  most  important 
task  of  the  new  government,  Hamilton's  office  and 
person  were  brought  into  a  prominence  in  the  new 
government  which  not  even  the  delicate  and  com 
plicated  questions  of  foreign  policy  could  obscure. 
Against  these  handicaps  Jefferson  only  fought  the 
harder  for  his  principles.  If  his  language  was  some 
times  extreme,  if  his  methods  at  times  verged  on 
arbitrariness,  if  he  was  too  quick  to  read  interested 
motives  into  his  adversary's  acts,  or  if  he  took 
fright  too  easily  at  the  spectre  of  "monarchy,"  it 
is  only  fair  to  remember  that  he  was  the  "leader  of 
the  opposition"  in  the  government. 

The  Hamiltonian  policies  of  funding  the  debt  of 
the  Confederation  at  par,  of  assuming  the  State 
debts,  and  of  erecting  a  national  bank  to  hold  the 
government  balances  and  handle  the  government 
loans  and  disbursements,  all  seemed  to  Jefferson 
parts  of  a  cleverly  laid  conspiracy  to  convert  our 
new  republic  into  a  virtual  monarchy.  Hamilton 
was  outspoken  in  his  admiration  for  the  English 
model.  Once  when  John  Adams  remarked  in  his 
presence  that  the  British  Government,  if  purged  of 
its  corruptions,  would  be  the  most  perfect  govern 
ment  on  earth,  Hamilton  replied  that  even  with  its 
corruptions  it  was  the  most  perfect  government  on 
earth — a  reply  on  which  Jefferson  based  his  charge 


IN  WASHINGTON'S  CABINET        159 

in  the  Anas  that  "Hamilton  was  not  only  a  mon 
archist,  but  for  a  monarchy  based  on  corruption." 
We  had  no  aristocracy  of  blood  and  title,  but  its 
place  could  be  supplied  by  an  aristocracy  of  wealth, 
just  as  effectively  in  control  of  the  government 
through  the  monopoly  of  its  funds. 

Moreover,  the  way  by  which  such  control  was 
being  secured  by  Hamilton's  followers,  Jefferson 
contended,  was  dishonorable  if  not  downright  dis 
honest.  Members  of  Congress  and  their  friends 
among  the  capitalist  class  of  the  Atlantic  seaboard, 
knowing  of  the  probable  passage  of  the  funding  bill 
long  before  the  news  reached  the  " common  people" 
and  especially  the  farmers  of  the  interior  regions, 
began  to  buy  up  the  depreciated  securities  of  the 
Confederation  (often  the  only  wealth  of  the  retired 
Revolutionary  soldier)  with  great  eagerness  and  at 
a  substantial  discount.  "  Couriers  and  relay  horses 
by  land,"  says  Jefferson  in  the  Anas,  "and  swift 
sailing  pilot  boats  by  sea,  were  flying  in  all  direc 
tions.  Active  partners  and  agents  were  associated 
and  employed  in  every  State,  town,  and  country 
neighborhood,  and  this  paper  was  bought  up  at 
five  shillings  and  even  as  low  as  two  shillings  in  the 
pound,  before  the  holder  knew  that  Congress  had 
already  provided  for  its  redemption  at  par.  Im 
mense  sums  were  thus  filched  from  the  poor  and 
ignorant,  and  fortunes  accumulated  by  those  who 
had  themselves  been  poor  enough  before.  Men  thus 


160  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

enriched  by  the  dexterity  of  a  leader  would  of 
course  follow  the  chief  who  was  leading  them  to 
fortune,  and  become  the  zealous  instruments  of  all 
his  enterprises."  Jefferson  called  the  fund-holders 
in  Congress  "a  corrupt  squadron"  marshalled  by 
the  secretary  of  the  treasury. 

It  is  unfortunately  true  that  speculation  took 
place,  and  even  reached  a  mania  which  Hamilton 
himself  deplored  as  much  as  Jefferson.  It  is  true 
that  men  gained  undeserved  fortunes  rapidly,  and 
that  the  fund-holders  voted  solidly  for  Hamilton's 
measures  in  Congress.  But  even  Jefferson  confessed 
that  our  credit  must  be  restored.  Could  it  have  been 
restored  without  the  funding  measures,  even  though 
they  brought  speculation  in  their  train  ?  And  grant 
ing  that  there  was  room  for  an  honest  difference  of 
opinion  on  the  equity  of  the  funding  measures,  there 
is  still  no  reason  for  characterizing  Hamilton's  party 
as  "  corrupt."  The  secretary  of  the  treasury  acted 
in  good  faith.  There  is  no  evidence  at  all  that  he 
gave  "tips"  to  congressmen  or  capitalists  on  the 
policy  of  the  department.  He  believed  that  the 
debt  of  the  country  should  be  redeemed  at  par  value 
for  the  sake  of  the  country's  credit  and  common 
honesty.  His  object  was  not  to  rob  anybody.  He 
did  not  act  precipitately  or  secretly.  The  question 
of  redemption  was  already  agitated  before  Hamilton 
made  his  famous  Report  of  January  14,  and  had  re 
ceived  the  approbation  of  President  Washington. 


IN  WASHINGTON'S  CABINET        161 

The  price  of  the  certificates  of  the  Confederation 
debt  had  been  rising  steadily  since  the  adoption  of 
the  new  Constitution. 

When  Washington  signed  the  bill  establishing  a 
national  bank  in  1791,  and  thus  put  the  capstone 
on  the  Hamiltonian  financial  structure,  Jefferson, 
defeated  in  Congress  and  the  cabinet,  turned  else 
where  for  allies  in  his  fight  to  "save  the  republican 
form  of  government."  He  had  faith  in  "the  peo 
ple,"  the  great  mass  of  farmers,  artisans,  small 
traders,  and  humble  folk,  whom  Hamilton  and  his 
followers  half  feared  and  half  despised  as  the  "mob." 
"Your  people,  sir,"  exclaimed  Hamilton  in  a  post 
prandial  discussion,  bringing  his  fist  down  on  the 
table,  "is  a  great  beast" !  To  educate  the  mass  of 
the  people,  on  whom  the  hope  of  continued  freedom 
must  depend,  so  that  they  should  be  increasingly 
capable  of  supervising  and  controlling  their  gov 
ernors,  seemed  to  Jefferson  the  sublimest  mission  of 
the  republic.  He  didn't  object  to  "a  little  rebellion 
now  and  then,"  nay,  he  even  prayed  God  that  we 
should  never  be  twenty  years  without  one,  because 
rebellions  showed  that  the  people  were  alert  "to 
resist  the  evils  under  which,  if  they  remained  quiet, 
it  meant  a  lethargy,  the  forerunner  of  death  to  the 
public  liberty."  He  owned  that  he  was  "not  a 
friend  to  a  very  energetic  government,"  which 
tended  invariably  to  oppression.  "The  people  are 
the  only  censors  of  their  governors,"  he  declared 


162  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

.  .  .  "they  may  be  led  astray  for  a  moment,  but 
will  soon  correct  themselves."  Publicity  was  the 
only  cure  for  political  evils.  The  basis  of  our  gov 
ernment  being  the  opinion  of  the  people,  its  very 
first  object  should  be  to  keep  that  right. 

It  was  in  perfect  accord,  therefore,  with  Jeffer 
son's  principles  to  transfer  the  fight  against  Hamil 
ton's  financial  measures,  the  "  corrupt  squadron," 
the  "anglomaniacs"  and  "monocrats,"  who  wished 
to  subvert  our  Constitution,  from  Congress  to  the 
country  at  large,  and  to  educate  the  people  to  a 
jealous  guardianship  of  their  liberties.  A  certain 
Philip  Freneau,  poet  and  journalist,  an  ardent  Dem 
ocrat,  was  recommended  to  the  good  offices  of  Jef 
ferson  by  his  old  college-mate  at  Princeton,  James 
Madison.  Jefferson  gave  Freneau  a  position  as 
translating  clerk  in  the  Department  of  State  at  the 
magnificent  salary  of  two  hundred  and  fifty  dollars 
a  year,  and  encouraged  him  to  set  up  a  newspaper 
in  Philadelphia  as  a  makeweight  to  John  Fenno's 
United  States  Gazette,  which  under  Hamilton's  pat 
ronage  was  "disseminating  the  doctrines  of  mon 
archy,  aristocracy,  and  the  exclusion  of  the  influ 
ence  of  the  people."  Freneau's  National  Gazette, 
which  began  to  appear  weekly  in  the  autumn  of 
1791,  was  the  most  caustic  sheet  that  ever  came 
from  the  printing-presses  of  America.  In  prose  and 
verse  alike  it  lashed  the  "First  Lord  of  the  Trea 
sury"  and  all  his  satellites.  Even  the  imperturb- 


IN  WASHINGTON'S  CABINET        163 

able  Washington,  to  whom  the  editor  with  diabolical 
politeness  mailed  three  "  complimentary "  copies  of 
every  issue,  was  stung  to  indignant  protest  by  its 
virulent  abuse.  He  complained  to  Jefferson,  but 
got  little  comfort.  "I  took  it  his  intention,"  says 
Jefferson,  "to  be  that  I  should  interfere  in  some 
way  with  Freneau,  perhaps  withdraw  his  appoint 
ment  as  translating  clerk  to  my  office.  But  I  will 
not  do  it.  His  paper  has  saved  our  Constitution, 
which  was  galloping  fast  into  monarchy." 

The  attacks  of  Freneau  in  the  Gazette  destroyed 
the  last  semblance  of  friendship  in  the  relations  of 
Hamilton  and  Jefferson,  already  strained  to  the 
breaking-point  by  contests  in  the  cabinet  over  every 
detail  of  the  treasury  programme,  and  embittered 
by  the  high-handed  interference  of  Hamilton  with 
the  business  of  the  Department  of  State.  The 
secretary  of  the  treasury  accused  Jefferson  of  being 
the  "patron"  of  the  Gazette,  and  scored  him  for  vili 
fying  the  administration  in  which  he  himself  held 
so  conspicuous  a  place.  Jefferson  declined  to  reply, 
but  Freneau  made  an  affidavit  to  the  effect  that 
Jefferson  had  nothing  to  do  with  his  paper  and  had 
"never  directly  or  indirectly  written,  dictated,  or 
composed  a  single  line  for  it."  The  unedifying 
wrangle  of  the  two  chief  officers  of  the  cabinet, 
sometimes  coming  near  to  blows  across  the  council 
table,  distressed  the  President.  He  wrote  to  them 
both  in  the  summer  of  1792,  endeavoring  to  effect  a 


164  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

reconciliation,  but  without  success.  Both  secre 
taries  were  devoted  to  Washington,  and  would  have 
done  anything  possible  to  please  him;  but  it  was 
impossible  for  them  to  agree  or  even  to  agree  to 
disagree.  Each  in  his  reply  to  Washington  threw 
the  blame  on  the  other,  and  both  offered  to  resign. 
But  Washington  wanted  them  both  in  his  cabinet, 
and  they  remained  to  quarrel  for  more  than  a  year 
longer. 

During  the  sultry  days  of  August,  1792,  while 
Washington  was  laboring  to  restore  harmony  in  his 
cabinet,  a  Jacobin  uprising  in  Paris  drove  King 
Louis  XVI  from  the  throne  which  his  Capetian  an 
cestors  had  occupied  for  eight  centuries.  On  Sep 
tember  22  a  convention  of  seven  hundred  and  fifty 
delegates  of  France,  assembled  at  Paris,  proclaimed 
the  first  French  Republic.  When  the  news  of  these 
events  reached  America  in  the  early  winter  there  was 
great  rejoicing.  The  Society  of  Tammany  illumi 
nated  the  windows  of  its  "wig- warn"  in  New  York. 
In  Boston  a  great  "civic  feast "  was  held  in  honor  of 
the  new  republic.  The  name  of  Oliver's  Dock  was 
changed  to  Liberty  Square;  an  ox  was  roasted  whole 
and  distributed  to  the  people  with  bread  and  punch; 
the  school  children  were  given  "civic  cakes"  stamped 
with  "liberty  and  equality."  Men  and  women  wore 
the  tricolor  cockade  and  addressed  each  other  as 
"citizen"  and  "citess"  after  the  manner  of  the 
Jacobins.  Then  more  news  came  of  a  different  sort : 


IN  WASHINGTON'S  CABINET        165 

how  the  convention  had  divided  into  the  warring 
factions  of  the  Mountain  and  the  Gironde,  how  they 
had  executed  their  King  and  declared  war  against 
Great  Britain. 

The  effect  of  these  rapid  events  of  the  French  Rev 
olution  on  America  was  to  widen  the  cleft  between 
the  two  parties,  which  had  already  formed  on  the 
financial  issue,  and  which  had  already  had  their  first 
trial  of  strength  in  the  elections  of  1792.1  The  Fed 
eralists,  as  Hamilton's  followers  were  called,  includ 
ing  the  great  merchants  and  bankers,  the  place-men 
and  security-holders,  the  Tories  and  the  majority 
of  the  clergy,  sympathized  with  England.  Over  fifty 
per  cent  of  our  trade  was  with  British  ports  and  over 
seventy-five  per  cent  of  our  revenue  was  derived 
from  that  trade.  Our  imports  from  Great  Britain 
and  her  colonies  in  1792  were  over  fifteen  million 
dollars,  as  against  two  million  dollars  from  France. 
Large  amounts  of  British  capital  were  invested  in« 
the  shares  of  our  national  bank.  The  farmers,  arti 
sans,  and  small  traders,  on  the  other  hand,  whose 
interests  were  wholly  domestic  and  whose  desire  was 
for  economy  with  low  taxes,  followed  Jefferson  as  the 
party  of  the  Democratic-Republicans.  They  sym- 

1  Washington  was  again  the  unanimous  choice  of  the  electors  for 
President,  but  the  choice  for  the  second  place  was  contested  with 
party  bitterness.  John  Adams,  the  administration  candidate,  re- 
received  77  votes,  while  his  Republican  opponent,  George  Clinton, 
got  50,  and  Jefferson  the  4  votes  of  Kentucky.  A  Republican 
majority  was  elected  to  Congress. 


166  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

pathized  with  France,  both  because  she  was  our  ally, 
to  whom  we  owed  in  large  measure  our  indepen 
dence,  and  because  she  was  the  enemy  of  England, 
whose  institutions  we  were  now  "  slavishly  copying. " 
They  saw  in  the  French  Declaration  of  the  Rights  of 
Man  (August,  1789)  the  reassertion  of  the  princi 
ples  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  to  which, 
they  said,  we  were  becoming  recreant. 

We  had  made  a  treaty  of  alliance — the  only  one 
in  our  history — with  France  in  1778,  guaranteeing 
her  possessions  in  the  West  Indies  in  case  of  rupture 
between  France  and  England,  and  opening  the 
ports  of  the  United  States  to  French  ships  of  war 
bringing  in  enemy  prizes.  When  Edmond  Genet, 
emissary  from  the  new  French  Republic  to  the 
"sister  Republic"  of  the  United  States,  landed  at 
Charleston,  South  Carolina,  in  April,  1793,  he  ex 
pected  to  profit  by  this  alliance.  He  didn't  ask  us 
to  join  in  the  war  against  Great  Britain,  because  he 
knew  that  the  terms  of  our  treaty  would  not  warrant 
that  request,  but  he  did  ask  certain  favors  and 
assume  certain  powers  which  soon  brought  him  into 
conflict  with  the  authorities  at  Philadelphia.  He 
wanted  us  to  advance  interest  payments  on  our 
debt  to  France  which  he  might  expend  for  military 
supplies  in  America.  He  took  a  British  prize 
within  the  capes  of  Chesapeake  Bay,  and  proceeded 
to  fit  out  ships  in  our  ports  to  prey  on  British  com 
merce.  He  brought  blank  commissions  to  fill  out 


IN  WASHINGTON'S  CABINET        167 

with  the  names  of  American  citizens  who  should 
raise  regiments  or  naval  recruits  for  the  war. 

Washington,  with  the  unanimous  consent  of  his 
cabinet,  declared  our  neutrality  toward  the  Euro 
pean  struggle  (April  22,  1793),  but  Genet's  excitable 
temper  was  only  the  more  aroused.  He  criticised 
the  President  and  scolded  the  secretary  of  state. 
He  paid  his  sarcastic  compliments  to  a  "republic57 
that  allowed  itself  to  be  governed  by  an  "aristo 
crat."  He  used  the  Republican  press  to  make  prop 
aganda  for  France,  indulging  in  highly  colored 
rhetoric  on  the  ingratitude  of  a  land  where  French 
blood  had  been  poured  out  like  water  for  the  cause 
of  freedom.  In  defiance  of  the  warnings  of  the 
government,  and  in  violation  of  his  own  implicit 
promise  to  Jefferson,  he  allowed  the  converted  prize 
the  Petite  Democrats  to  sail  away  from  her  moorings 
at  Philadelphia. 

Jefferson's  conduct  in  these  trying  circumstances 
is  acknowledged  even  by  those  historians  who  are 
quick  to  condemn  his  motives  to  have  been  most 
correct.  It  was  a  great  disappointment  to  him 
that  the  envoy  from  the  nation  which  he  set  next 
to  his  own  in  his  affections  should  behave  in  such  a 
way  as  to  merit  rebuke  and  finally  dismissal,  but  he 
did  not  hesitate  on  that  account  to  do  his  duty. 
He  delivered  a  cabinet  opinion  on  May  16,  1793,  to 
the  effect  that  we  should  forbid  France  to  fit  out 
privateers  in  our  harbors  and  apologize  to  Great 


168  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

Britain  for  the  capture  of  any  of  her  vessels  on  the 
high  seas  by  such  privateers.  He  warned  Genet 
that  French  vessels  illegally  equipped  and  com 
manded  must  leave  our  waters.  He  quoted  Vattel 
and  other  learned  authorities  on  the  laws  of  nations, 
much  to  Genet's  disgust,  who  begged  that  they 
might  treat  like  republicans  and  not  "lower"  them 
selves  "to  the  level  of  ancient  politics  by  diplomatic 
subtleties."  "I  do  not  augur  well  of  the  conduct 
of  the  new  French  minister,"  wrote  Jefferson  to 
Monroe  on  June  28,  1793.  "I  am  doing  everything 
in  my  power  to  moderate  the  impetuosity  of  his 
movements  and  to  destroy  the  dangerous  opinions 
which  have  been  excited  in  him  that  the  people  of 
the  United  States  will  disavow  the  acts  of  their  gov 
ernment,  and  that  he  has  an  appeal  from  the  Execu 
tive  to  Congress  and  from  both  to  the  people." 
And  a  few  days  later  to  Madison:  "Never  in  my 
opinion  was  so  calamitous  an  appointment  made  as 
that  of  the  present  minister  of  F[rance]  here.  Hot 
headed,  all  imagination,  no  judgment,  passionate, 
disrespectful,  and  even  indecent  to  the  President] 
...  he  renders  my  position  immensely  difficult." 
Finally  Genet's  recall  was  demanded,  Jefferson 
writing  to  our  minister  at  Paris,  Gouverneur  Morris, 
a  review  of  the  conduct  of  the  impetuous  envoy,  and 
declaring  that  "if  our  citizens  have  not  already  been 
shedding  ea-ch  other's  blood,  it  is  not  owing  to  the 
moderation  of  M.  Genet."  Jefferson  realized,  of 


IN  WASHINGTON'S  CABINET        169 

course,  that  the  recall  of  Genet,  while  a  relief  to 
himself,  would  be  in  the  nature  of  a  triumph  for  the 
Hamiltonian  party,  who  had  warned  against  the 
danger  of  showing  any  sympathy  with  the  French 
democrats;  but  he  was  not  deterred  thereby  from 
doing  his  duty  to  the  President  and  the  laws  of  the 
country.  Professor  McMaster's  unjust  remark  that 
Jefferson  was  "at  all  times  more  French  than 
American"  needs  no  further  refutation  than  the 
Genet  episode. 

Ever  since  his  failure  to  check  the  financial  cen 
tralization  of  the  Hamiltonian  programme,  and  his 
consequent  alienation  from  the  policy  of  the  admin 
istration,  Jefferson  had  been  anxious  to  resign  from 
the  cabinet.  He  intended  fully  to  retire  at  the  end 
of  Washington's  first  term,  and  wrote  to  the  Presi 
dent  from  Monticello  on  September  9,  1792,  in  reply 
to  the  appeal  for  reconciliation  with  Hamilton,  that 
he  looked  "to  that  period  with  the  longing  of  a 
wave-worn  mariner  who  has  at  length  the  land  in 
view."  At  the  President's  solicitation,  he  consented 
to  remain,  but  the  vexation  of  Genet's  conduct  and 
the  encroachment  of  Hamilton  on  his  department 
by  instructing  the  collectors  of  customs  to  be  on 
the  lookout  for  French  violations  of  neutrality  and 
report  them  to  him  in  secret  made  the  thought  of 
continuing  in  the  cabinet  intolerable  to  him.  On 
July  30,  1793,  he  again  wrote  Washington,  begging 
to  be  relieved  of  his  office  "at  the  close  of  the  pres- 


170  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

ent  quarter  (September  30)."  He  alleged  his  doubt 
less  sincere  desire  to  return  to  Monticello  to  repair 
his  estate,  but  political  vexations  were  probably  the 
chief  reason  for  his  request.  When  Washington 
called  on  him  in  August  to  persuade  him  to  remain 
until  the  end  of  the  year,  Jefferson  declared  that  he 
was  obliged  in  the  present  cabinet  to  move  exactly 
in  the  circles  which  bore  him  peculiar  hatred:  "That 
is  to  say,  the  wealthy  aristocrats,  the  merchants 
connected  loosely  with  England,  the  newly  created 
paper  fortunes."  "Thus  surrounded  my  words  are 
caught,  multiplied,  misconstrued,  and  even  fabri 
cated  and  spread  abroad  to  my  injury."  Jefferson 
stayed  to  the  end  of  the  year,  however,  and  de 
parted  for  Monticello  with  a  New  Year's  letter  of 
hearty  commendation  from  the  President:  "Since  it 
has  been  impossible  to  persuade  you  to  forego  any 
longer  the  indulgence  of  your  desire  for  private  life, 
the  event,  however  anxious  I  am  to  avert  it,  must 
be  submitted  to.  But  I  cannot  suffer  you  to  leave 
your  station  without  assuring  you  that  the  opinion 
which  I  had  formed  of  your  integrity  and  talents, 
and  which  dictated  your  original  nomination,  has 
been  confirmed  by  the  fullest  experience;  and  that 
both  have  been  eminently  displayed  in  the  discharge 
of  your  duty.  Let  a  conviction  of  my  most  earnest 
prayers  for  your  happiness  accompany  you  in  your 
retirement."  So  clear  had  Jefferson  been  in  his 
great  office  that  John  Marshall  could  not  withhold 


IN  WASHINGTON'S  CABINET        171 

a  word  of  tempered  praise  in  declaring  that  "this 
gentleman  withdrew  from  political  station  at  a  time 
when  he  stood  particularly  high  in  the  esteem  of  his 
countrymen."1 

1  William  E.  Curtis  in  The  True  Thomas  Jefferson,  a  book  teem 
ing  with  errors,  says  that  Jefferson  "used  underhand  methods  and 
was  commonly  engaged  in  intrigue  not  only  against  his  colleagues 
in  the  cabinet  but  even  against  Washington";  that  his  reply  of  Sep 
tember  9,  1792,  to  Washington's  letter  was  "insulting  and  inexcusa 
ble";  but  that  Washington  out  of  respect  for  Jefferson's  ability  and 
patriotism  "overlooked  the  insult  and  allowed  him  to  remain  in  the 
cabinet";  that  Jefferson  promised  to  resign  in  January,  1793,  but 
when  the  time  came  reconsidered  and  held  on  to  his  place,  much  to 
the  President's  disappointment;  and  that,  finally,  "Jefferson  de 
clined  to  dismiss  Freneau  and  was  himself  compelled  to  resign." 
Every  single  one  of  these  statements  is  false.  But  perhaps  nothing 
better  could  be  expected  of  a  book  that  is  vitiated  all  the  way 
through  by  the  hypothesis  that  Jefferson  was  a  demagogue  whose 
"plans  of  government  were  acquired  from  the  French  revolution 
ists,"  who  had  moved  among  "the  citizen  leaders  of  the  Revolution 
and  experienced  the  bloody  and  furious  scenes  in  France."  Mr. 
Curtis  makes  Jefferson  bring  home  to  America  the  Jacobin  fury  two 
years  before  it  broke  out  in  France. 


CHAPTER  VII 
THE  REPUBLICAN  TRIUMPH 

We  are  sensible  of  the  duty  and  expediency  of  submitting  our  opinions 
to  the  will  of  the  majority,  and  can  wait  with  patience  until  they  get 
right  if  they  happen  to  be  at  any  time  wrong.  (Jefferson  to  John 
Breckenridge,  January  29,  1800.) 

"THE  ensuing  year  will  be  the  longest  of  my  life,  and 
the  last  of  such  hateful  labors/'  wrote  Jefferson  to 
his  daughter,  Martha  Randolph,  in  March,  1792; 
"the  next  we  will  sow  our  cabbages  together. "  In 
letters  written  to  his  friends  after  his  belated  return 
to  Monticello,  he  renounces  all  further  interest  in 
politics.  He  is  now  "settled  at  home  as  a  farmer," 
his  mind  "totally  absorbed  in  rural  occupations. " 
To  John  Adams  he  writes  that  his  only  regret  is 
that  his  retirement  was  "postponed  four  years  too 
long."  He  replies  to  a  friendly  letter  from  Washing 
ton  with  the  sentiment:  "I  cherish  tranquillity  too 
much  to  suffer  political  things  to  enter  my  mind  at 
all";  and  declares  to  Madison  that  he  has  not  seen 
or  wished  to  see  a  Philadelphia  paper  since  he  left 
the  town.  Indeed  he  doubted  if  he  should  "ever 
take  another  newspaper  of  any  sort" — the  man 
who  preferred  newspapers  without  a  government  to 
a  government  without  newspapers !  If  such  senti- 

172 


THE  REPUBLICAN  TRIUMPH        173 

ments  sound  hypocritical,  especially  in  view  of  the 
fact  that  Jefferson  presently  entered  the  political 
race  and  spent  twelve  consecutive  years  in  the 
offices  of  Vice-President  and  President,  we  must 
remember  that  it  was  the  fashion  in  his  day  for 
public  men  to  protest  in  elaborate  terms  their  aver 
sion  to  the  cares  of  office,  and  to  think  themselves 
in  "declining  years"  when  they  had  reached  the 
age  of  fifty.  Jefferson  was  probably  sincere  in  his 
belief  that  he  had  given  up  active  political  life  for 
ever  for  his  cabbages  at  Monticello.  But  he  soon 
began  sowing  the  seeds  of  a  different  harvest. 

"It  is  easier  to  get  into  politics  than  to  get  out  of 
them,"  remarks  the  Tory  in  Lowes  Dickinson's 
Modern  Symposium.  So  it  proved  with  Jefferson. 
His  retirement  from  the  cabinet  left  a  free  field  in 
the  administration  to  Hamilton,  under  whose  influ 
ence  Washington  became  an  out-and-out  Federalist. 
"I  shall  not,"  the  President  wrote  to  Pickering  in 
September,  1795,  "while  I  have  the  honor  to  ad 
minister  the  government,  bring  a  man  into  any  office 
whose  political  tenets  are  adverse  to  the  measures 
which  the  general  government  are  pursuing,  for 
this,  in  my  opinion,  would  be  a  sort  of  political  sui 
cide."  The  brief  experiment  of  non-partisan  gov 
ernment  was  at  an  end  in  the  United  States.  But 
Thomas  Jefferson  was  not  the  man  to  stand  idly  by 
and  see  what  he  considered  the  wrong  party  and 
principles  win.  He  was  too  much  of  a  politician 


174  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

and  too  much  of  a  patriot  for  that.  The  opponents 
of  the  administration  in  Congress  and  the  country 
at  large  had  already  come  to  look  on  him  as  their 
leader,  and  he  must  not  fail  them.  The  Republicans 
of  Boston  in  a  caucus  wrote  him  just  after  his  resig 
nation  from  the  cabinet  that  "if  he  would  place 
himself  at  their  head,  they  would  choose  him  at 
the  next  election."  The  politics  which  he  banished 
from  his  earliest  letters  from  Monticello  in  1794 
came  stealing  back,  in  first  a  sentence,  then  a  para 
graph,  then  a  disquisition.  He  checks  himself  reso 
lutely  with  "but  away,  politics!"  and  turns  to  the 
praise  of  his  clover  or  the  price  of  his  wheat.  But 
the  old  lure  is  too  strong  for  him.  His  conversion 
is  unconvincing.  He  reminds  one  of  Saint  Jerome, 
turned  Christian,  trying  to  scourge  the  love  of  Cicero 
out  of  his  mind. 

The  leaders  of  political  parties  have  always  been 
inclined  to  attribute  base  motives  to  their  oppo 
nents  and  high  motives  to  themselves;  and  the  his 
torians  who  come  after  them  have  too  often  been 
willing  to  accept  one  or  the  other  of  the  evaluations 
as  true  according  as  their  own  sympathies  inclined. 
For  the  Federalists,  Jefferson  and  his  followers  were 
the  advocates  of  the  irresponsible  rule  of  the  mob. 
They  were  deliberately  working  to  bring  the  gov 
ernment  into  contempt  and  ruin  its  credit  in  the 
eyes  of  Europe.  They  opposed  its  "compulsive 
energy"  because  they  didn't  want  to  pay  their 


THE  REPUBLICAN  TRIUMPH        175 

debts.  They  "generated  mistrust  and  irritation 
between  this  country  and  Great  Britain"  because 
they  were  under  "the  baleful  ascendency  of  French 
influence"  and  the  victims  of  "a  contagion  of  level- 
ism."  They  were  inoculated  with  the  incendiary, 
anarchistic,  atheistic  poison  of  the  Jacobins.  For 
the  Republicans,  on  the  other  hand,  Hamilton  was 
the  chief  of  a  "corrupt  squadron"  in  Congress  who 
had  created  a  fictitious  debt  in  order  to  keep  the 
common  people  of  the  country  under  a  perpetual 
burden  of  taxation,  which  would  insure  their  social 
serfdom  to  "the  rich,  the  well-born,  and  the  able." 
The  Federalist  system  "flowed  from  principles  ad 
verse  to  liberty."  Its  adherents  flouted  the  Con 
stitution  and  wished  to  "administer  it  into  a  mon 
archy."  Their  contempt  for  the  people  proceeded 
from  the  motives  of  aristocratic  snobbery  and  eco 
nomic  greed.  What  each  party  prized  as  its  princi 
ples  the  other  denounced  as  rank  prejudices.  The 
fiscal  system  which  Hamilton  regarded  as  the 
guaranty  of  our  national  honor,  was  for  Jefferson 
"a  tissue  of  machinations  against  the  liberty  of  the 
country";  while  Fisher  Ames  stigmatized  as  "revo 
lutionary  Robespierreism "  the  Republican  move 
ment  which  Jefferson  called  "the  awakening  of  the 
spirit  of  1776." 

It  would  be  idle  to  multiply  quotations  to  prove 
the  truth  or  the  falsehood  of  either  of  these  points 
of  view.  The  test  of  their  "truth"  is  an  experimen- 


176  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

tal  one.  Politics  is  not  a  determined  science,  but  a 
very  flexible  and  pragmatic  art.  And,  doubtless, 
since  speculation  on  the  forms  and  functions  of  gov 
ernment  began,  men  have  been  divided  into  these 
two  fundamental  parties — one  advocating  govern 
ment/or  the  people  by  the  strong,  the  rich,  the  titled, 
the  educated;  the  other  advocating  government  by 
the  people  through  eliciting  the  dormant  intellect 
and  virtue  of  the  whole  community  by  a  wide-spread 
system  of  free  education,  a  close  control  of  public 
officers  by  the  people,  and  a  wide  extension  of  the 
suffrage.  As  long  as  men  live  together  in  political 
societies  there  will  be  those  who  fear  anarchy  more 
than  tyranny  and  those  who  set  freedom  above 
efficiency.  We  incline  toward  the  one  or  the  other 
of  these  opinions  according  to  our  nature  and 
nurture,  and  the  bias  is  seldom  removed  by  educa 
tion  or  experience.  There  are  " tastes"  in  pol 
itics  as  well  as  in  food,  and  they  are  as  impossible 
to  account  for.  Witness  Alexander  Hamilton,  the 
illegitimate  son  of  a  Scotch  father  and  a  French 
mother,  a  restless  spirit  with  the  shrewd  sense  of 
one  parent  and  the  versatility  and  grace  of  the 
other,  an  ardent,  precocious  boy,  coming  from  the 
British  island  of  Nevis  to  New  York  as  a  venture 
for  his  education,  an  orator  swaying  crowds  as  an 
undergraduate  of  King's  College  at  the  age  of  sev 
enteen;  and  Thomas  Jefferson  with  the  aristocratic 
blood  of  the  Randolphs  in  his  veins,  dining  with  the 


THE  REPUBLICAN  TRIUMPH        177 

royal  governor's  little  partie  quarree  in  Williams- 
burg,  settled  on  his  broad  acres  at  Monticello  with 
his  numerous  slaves  and  dependants,  retiring  in  na 
ture,  silent  in  public,  ultra-sensitive,  a  litterateur 
and  musician,  a  philosopher  and  scientist.  By  all 
the  canons  of  probability  Jefferson  should  have 
been  the  aristocratic  Federalist  and  Hamilton  the 
Democratic-Republican.  Dis  aliter  visum! 

Jefferson's  democracy  was  not  a  pose  or  a  pre 
text:  it  was  a  deep-seated  principle.  He  devoted 
himself  wholly  to  the  reform  of  the  evils  which 
"the  shameless  corruption  of  a  portion  of  the  rep 
resentatives  in  the  first  and  second  Congresses "  had 
introduced,  as  he  wrote  to  his  successor  in  the 
State  Department,  Edmund  Randolph,  "because  on 
the  success  of  such  exertions  the  form  of  the  gov 
ernment  is  to  depend/'  "Were  parties  here,"  he 
writes  to  the  Virginia  congressman,  Giles,  "divided 
merely  by  greediness  for  office  as  in  England,  to 
take  a  part  in  either  would  be  unworthy  of  a  reason 
able  or  moral  man;  but  where  the  principle  of  differ 
ence  is  as  substantial  and  as  strongly  pronounced  as 
between  the  Republicans  and  Monocrats  of  our 
own  country,  I  hold  it  as  honorable  to  take  a  firm 
and  decided  part  and  as  immoral  to  pursue  a  middle 
line  as  between  the  parties  of  honest  men  and 
rogues  into  which  every  country  is  divided. "  Jef 
ferson  believed  in  the  common  people  as  "the  most 
honest  and  safe,  tho'  not  always  the  most  wise  de- 


178  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

pository  of  the  public  interest."  He  confessed  that 
he  was  not  among  those  who  feared  the  people. 
George  Washington  wrote:  "Mankind  left  to  them 
selves  are  unfit  for  their  own  government."  John 
Marshall  said:  "I  fear,  and  there  is  no  opinion  more 
degrading  to  the  dignity  of  man,  that  those  have 
truth  on  their  side  who  say  that  man  is  incapable  of 
governing  himself."  But  Thomas  Jefferson  never 
experienced  such  disillusionment.  His  optimism 
was  too  deeply  founded  in  the  philosophy  of  human 
perfectibility  through  education  to  be  shaken  even 
by  revolutions,  whether  tiny  as  Shays's  or  mighty 
as  Danton's.  He  didn't  dread  wiping  the  slate 
clean — of  constitutions,  national  debts,  religious 
creeds,  privileged  orders,  or  even  a  whole  generation 
of  men  and  women — if  liberty  depended  on  the  issue 
of  the  contest.  The  September  massacres  in  Paris 
he  deplored,  but  rather  than  have  seen  the  cause 
of  the  Revolution  fail,  he  wrote  to  William  Short, 
he  would  have  had  half  the  earth  desolated.  "Were 
there  but  an  Adam  and  Eve  left  in  every  country 
and  left  free,  it  would  be  better  than  it  now  is." 

There  is  obviously  much  ridiculous  exaggeration 
in  these  sentiments,  just  as  there  is  in  the  expres 
sions  of  the  Federalists  in  the  countercharges  that 
the  Republicans  were  "a  composition  of  incongru 
ous  materials  all  tending  to  mischief,"  led  by  "an 
atheist  in  religion  and  a  fanatic  in  politics"  (the 
words  are  Hamilton's).  Jefferson  may  well  have 


THE  REPUBLICAN  TRIUMPH        179 

been  mistaken  in  his  estimate  of  the  effect  on  the 
country  of  the  Hamiltonian  measures  of  funding, 
assumption,  the  tariff,  excise  duties,  and  the  bank; 
but  to  make  jealousy  of  their  author  the  source  of 
Jefferson's  opposition  to  them  is  to  take  the  effect 
for  the  cause.  Jefferson  distrusted  and  even  de 
tested  Hamilton,  not  because  he  was  a  successful 
rival  for  the  favor  of  the  President  and  Congress, 
but  because  he  was  the  advocate  of  principles  which 
Jefferson  believed  his  life  long  to  be  destructive  of 
genuine  democracy.  One  need  not  agree  with  Jef 
ferson's  political  philosophy  to  accord  him  the  jus 
tice  of  the  recognition  of  this  truth. 

When  Jefferson  left  the  cabinet  the  "  treasury 
phalanx"  was  still  intrenched  in  Congress  and  the 
courts.  The  opposition  to  Hamilton's  political  and 
financial  centralization  was  wide-spread  but  unor 
ganized.  "Are  the  people  in  your  quarter  as  well 
contented  with  the  proceedings  of  our  government 
as  their  representatives  say  they  are?"  asked  Jef 
ferson  of  R.  H.  Lee  as  early  as  February,  1791. 
"There  is  a  vast  mass  of  discontent  gathered  in  the 
South,  and  how  and  when  it  will  break  God  knows. 
I  look  forward  to  it  with  some  anxiety."  To  organ 
ize  this  "vast  mass  of  discontent,"  not  only  in  the 
South,  but  all  through  the  land,  was  the  task  which 
Jefferson  undertook  in  the  enthusiasm  of  his  demo 
cratic  faith.  He  believed  that  the  great  majority 
of  the  American  people,  if  they  found  their  voice, 


180  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

would    protest    against    the    Hamiltonian    policy 
through  which   our   country  was   fast   "galloping 

,  into  monarchy."  There  was  no  further  help  in  an 
unreformed  Congress  which  passed  Hamilton's  bills 
a,t  his  bidding.  "The  only  correction  of  what  is 
corrupt  in  our  present  form  of  government/'  wrote 

v  Jefferson  to  George  Mason,  "will  be  the  augmenta 
tion  of  the  numbers  in  the  lower  house,  so  as  to  get 
a  more  agricultural  representation,  which  may  put 
that  interest  above  that  of  the  stock-jobbers." 

Jefferson  had  so  strong  a  prejudice  in  favor  of  the 
agricultural  classes  that  he  was  even  partially  rec 
onciled  to  the  ravages  of  the  yellow  fever  in  the 
cities.  It  swept  away  the  "artificers"  (mechanics), 
whom  he  considered  "the  panders  of  vice  and  the 
instruments  by  which  the  liberties  of  a  country  are 
generally  overturned."  The  cultivators  of  the  soil, 
on  the  other  hand,  he  wrote  to  John  Jay  in  1785, 
"are  the  most  valuable  citizens:  they  are  the  most 
vigorous,  the  most  independent,  the  most  virtuous, 
and  they  are  tied  to  their  country  and  wedded  to  its 
liberty  and  interests  by  the  most  lasting  bonds." 
Hence  Jefferson's  opposition  to  the  mercantile  and 
industrial  interests  which  were  encouraged  by  Ham 
ilton's  funding  policy  and  protective  tariff.  Jeffer 
son  was  a  "physiocrat."  If  he  had  any  French 
tutor  it  was  not  the  eccentric  Rousseau  with  his 
"virtuous  savage,"  but  the  practical  Turgot,  who 
sought  to  build  the  state  on  the  broad  foundations 


THE  REPUBLICAN  TRIUMPH        181 

of  local  liberties,  resting  on  the  ultimate  base  of  the 
nation's  wealth — the  soil.  It  was  not  because  Jef 
ferson  was  " stupid"  or  "lacking  any  capacity  for 
financial  matters"  that  he  rejected  the  whole  struc 
ture  of  Hamilton:  industrial  stocks  resting  on  the 
bank  issues,  and  these  on  the  consolidated  public 
debt,  and  all  on  the  foundation  of  taxation.  It  was 
rather  because  he  saw  in  it  what  to  him  was  the 
vicious  principles  of  a  perpetual  debt  with  its  double 
curse  of  speculative  attraction  for  the  rich  and  bur 
densome  taxation  for  the  poor.  He  looked  askance 
on  Hamilton's  cunning  in  figures,  as  Luther  did  on 
the  great  Augsburg  bankers,  the  Fuggers.  "I  am 
not  skilled  in  accounts,"  said  Brother  Martin,  "but 
I  do  not  understand  how  100  guldens  can  gain  20 
in  a  year,  or  how  one  can  gain  another,  and  that 
not  from  the  soil  or  cattle,  where  success  depends 
not  on  the  wit  of  men  but  on  the  blessing  of  God." 
The  skill  and  diligence  with  which  Jefferson  or 
ganized  the  opposition  to  the  policy  of  the  adminis 
tration  has  been  recognized  by  his  friends  and  his 
foes  alike.  "Almost  never,"  says  Professor  Chan- 
ning,  "has  a  political  party  been  so  efficiently  or  so 
secretly  marshalled  and  led."  Jefferson  had  need 
of  all  the  patient  optimism  of  his  nature  in  building 
up  a  Republican  party,  for  not  only  were  the  "Mon- 
ocrats"  firmly  intrenched  in  public  office,  with  the 
private  support  of  wealth  and  of  that  social  defer 
ence  which  was  common  in  the  days  of  our  fore- 


182  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

fathers,  but  there  was  little  apparent  promise  in 
the  material  out  of  which  the  new  party  had  to  be 
built.  Soon  after  he  left  the  cabinet  Jefferson  wrote 
from  Monticello  to  Madison:  "I  could  not  have  sup 
posed  when  I  left  Philadelphia  that  so  little  of  what 
was  passing  there  could  be  known  even  at  Kentucky 
as  is  the  case  here.  Judging  from  this  of  the  rest  of 
the  Union,  it  is  evident  to  me  that  the  people  are 
not  in  a  condition  either  to  approve  or  disapprove 
of  their  government,  nor  consequently  influence  it." 
To  cure  this  ignorance  and  indifference,  which  alone 
kept  the  great  majority  from  the  exercise  of  political 
power,  Jefferson  started  a  campaign  of  education. 
He  did  not  write  for  the  press  himself,  but  he  en 
couraged  his  political  henchmen  to  do  so,  with  little 
scruple  for  the  niceness  of  their  speech.  "Jacobin" 
papers  began  to  appear  everywhere,  and  the  success 
of  their  propaganda  is  evidenced  by  the  outrageous 
Sedition  Act  passed  by  John  Adams's  first  Congress 
primarily  to  punish  Republican  editors.  "  Along 
with  infidel  philosophy,"  wails  a  Federalist  organ, 
"a  most  powerful  cause  of  the  rapid  decay  of  our 
government  is  a  licentious  and  prostituted  press." 
Another  Federalist  editor  bemoans  the  fact  that 
Republican  papers  have  been  established  "from 
Portsmouth  to  Savannah." 

Jefferson  was  tireless  in  his  devotion  to  the  cause. 
He  gathered  his  "lieutenants,"  Madison,  Monroe, 
and  Nicholas,  about  him  at  Monticello  for  week-end 


THE  REPUBLICAN  TRIUMPH        183 

conferences.  He  wrote  hundreds  of  letters  to  the 
growing  group  of  Republicans  in  Congress  and  the 
State  legislatures.  His  political  clientele  reached 
from  the  Maine  wilderness  to  the  Kentucky  frontier, 
and  his  power  to  command  the  co-operation  of  his 
followers  seemed  almost  hypnotic.  "  Every  man 
must  lay  his  purse  and  his  pen  under  contribution/ ' 
he  wrote  to  Madison  in  the  fiercest  part  of  the  strug 
gle  with  federalism;  "let  me  pray  and  beseech  you 
to  set  apart  a  certain  portion  of  every  post-day  to 
write  what  may  be  proper  for  the  public."1  From 
1789  to  1793  about  twenty  per  cent  of  Madison's 
correspondence  was  with  Jefferson;  from  1793  to 
1800  the  percentage  rose  to  nearly  eighty.  If  Jef 
ferson  could  so  command  the  political  service  of 
James  Madison,  it  is  easy  to  see  what  his  influence 
must  have  been  on  lesser  men  from  Monroe  down. 
Probably  the  chief  cause  of  Jefferson's  ultimate 
success  was  his  confidence  in  the  triumph  of  democ 
racy  because  democracy  was  right.  In  this  faith  he 
never  faltered.  If  the  Jacobins  of  Paris  plunged 
into  an  orgy  of  blood  in  the  sacred  name  of  democ 
racy,  it  was  the  Jacobins  and  not  democracy  that 
should  bear  the  stigma.  If  rogues  in  America  mas 
queraded  as  friends  of  the  people,  it  was  no  argu- 

1  In  the  same  letter  Jefferson  asked  Madison  to  publish  his  Notes 
taken  in  the  Federal  Convention,  thinking  they  would  revive  inter 
est  in  the  first  principles  of  our  democracy.  These  valuable  Notes 
were  sold  to  Congress  in  1837  by  Madison's  widow  for  thirty  thou 
sand  dollars,  and  published  by  the  government  in  1841. 


184  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

ment  that  the  real  friends  of  the  people  were  rogues. 
Neither  the  indiscretion  of  Genet  nor  the  perfidy  of 
Talleyrand  could  disturb  his  faith.  Neither  defeat 
in  diplomacy  nor  disaster  at  the  polls  could  shake 
his  confidence.  When  his  friends  lost  courage  he 
cheered  them.  "The  tide  against  our  Constitution 
is  unquestionably  strong,"  he  wrote  to  Congressman 
Giles,  "but  it  will  turn.  Everything  tells  me  so, 
and  every  day  verifies  the  prediction.  Hold  on, 
then,  like  a  good  and  faithful  seaman  till  our  brother 
sailors  can  rouse  from  their  intoxication  and  right 
the  vessel."  When  John  Taylor,  of  Caroline,  ad 
vised  secession  from  the  perverse  aristocrats  of  New 
England,  who  had  acquired  an  "unrepublican  ascen 
dency,"  Jefferson  rebuked  him:  "It  is  true  that  we 
are  completely  under  the  saddle  of  Massachusetts 
and  Connecticut,  and  that  they  ride  us  very  hard 
.  .  .  but  if  in  a  temporary  superiority  of  one  party, 
the  other  is  to  resort  to  a  scission  of  the  Union,  no 
federal  agreement  can  ever  exist.  .  .  .  Suppose  the 
New  England  states  alone  cut  off,  will  our  nature  be 
changed?  Are  we  not  men  still  to  the  south  of 
that,  with  all  the  passions  of  men?  Immediately 
we  shall  see  a  Pennsylvania  and  a  Virginia  party 
arise  in  the  residuary  confederacy,  and  the  public 
mind  will  be  distracted  with  the  same  party  spirit. 
...  A  little  patience  and  we  shall  see  the  reign  of 
witches  pass  over,  their  spells  dissolved,  and  the 
people  recovering  their  true  sight  and  restoring  their 


THE  REPUBLICAN  TRIUMPH        185 

government  to  its  true  principles.  .  .  .  For  this  is 
a  game  where  principles  are  at  stake."  The  echoes 
of  these  words  are  in  the  speeches  of  Webster  and 
the  messages  of  Lincoln. 

If  the  Constitution  was  maladministered,  in  other 
words,  the  remedy  was  not  to  destroy  the  Constitu 
tion  but  to  change  the  administration.  Slowly  but 
steadily  Jefferson's  propaganda  gained  ground,  win 
ning  a  district  here  and  a  county  there.  The  Fed 
eralists  saw  it  encroaching  even  on  their  sacred  pre 
cinct  of  New  England,  and  likened  it  to  the  plague 
of  locusts;  but  they  were  powerless  to  check  it. 
They  had  never  taken  the  people  into  their  con 
fidence.  They  knew  only  how  to  rule,  not  to  per 
suade.  They  clung  to  old  shibboleths  and  sounded 
wild  cries  of  warning  against  the  "political  heresies 
gaining  ground  among  us/7  preached  by  "demo- 
cratical  Jeffersonians"  and  "itinerant  Jacobins'7 
holding  forth  in  the  bar-rooms  of  Rhode  Island 
and  Vermont.  But  they  were  fighting  an  ideal  with 
memories.  Jefferson  asked  only  for  "health  and  a 
day."  The  great  ally,  Time,  was  on  his  side. 

But  if  Jefferson  was  an  idealist  in  theory,  in  prac 
tice  he  was  one  of  the  most  astute  and  hard-headed 
politicians  that  ever  appeared  in  our  public  life. 
The  contrast  between  his  lofty  professions  and  his 
shrewd  methods  has  tempted  many  historians  to 
dismiss  him  rather  contemptuously  as  a  deliberate 
hypocrite  or  a  self-deceived  visionary.  He  was  as 


186  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

elusive  as  Robespierre.  He  avoided  a  frontal  at 
tack  for  the  hidden  policy  of  sapping  and  mining. 
He  was  exasperatingly  silent  when  his  enemies  were 
waiting  for  him  to  deliver  himself  into  their  hands 
by  confession  or  apology.  He  was  fertile  in  the 
suggestions  that  set  a  hundred  men  to  work.  Being 
in  opposition  to  the  administration  during  the  full 
decade  which  elapsed  from  the  triumph  of  Hamil 
ton's  financial  policy  to  his  own  inauguration  as 
President,  he  be.came  a  past  master  in  the  Mephis- 
tophelian  art  of  destructive  criticism  and  "slow 
disparagement."  Not  an  act  of  the  government 
of  Washington  and  Adams  escaped  his  lynx-eyed 
scrutiny.  Our  whole  domestic  and  foreign  policy 
during  the  last  decade  of  the  eighteenth  century- 
was  a  continuous  text  for  his  running  sermon  on 
the  betrayal  of  democracy  in  the  house  of  its  glori 
ous  birth. 

The  resignation  of  Jefferson  from  the  cabinet  co 
incided  with  the  development  of  complications  be 
tween  this  country  and  France  and  England,  which 
were  destined  to  involve  us  in  two  actual  wars,  and 
to  bring  us  again  and  again  to  the  verge  of  war 
before  Napoleon  Bonaparte  was  finally  sent  to  his 
rocky  exile  on  St.  Helena.  So  long  as  the  French 
Revolution  was  a  purely  domestic  affair  or  (with 
the  intervention  of  Austria  and  Prussia  in  1792) 
only  a  continental  European  affair,  it  did  not  touch 
us  directly.  The  "Francophiles"  and  "Anglomen" 


THE  REPUBLICAN  TRIUMPH        187 

in  this  country  could  rejoice  over  the  victory  of 
Valmy  together,  or  shudder  at  the  slaughter  of  the 
aristocrats.  They  could  chant  the  carmagnole  or 
quote  Burke's  mournful  prophecies  with  the  de 
tachment  of  distant,  if  interested,  observers.  But 
when  Great  Britain  was  drawn  into  the  conflict  the 
war  came  home  to  us;  for  Great  Britain  ruled  our 
commerce.  We  proclaimed  neutrality  and  rebuked 
Genet.  But  neutrality  was  hard  to  keep. 

The  French  Republic  immediately  threw  open 
the  French  West  Indian  ports  to  our  ships,  a  piece 
of  crafty  generosity  to  prevent  the  islands  from 
being  starved  when  England's  powerful  navy  should 
cut  them  off  from  the  French  trade.  Great  Britain, 
invoking  the  "Rule  of  1756,"  which  forbade  a  bel 
ligerent  to  open  its  ports  to  a  nation  to  whom  they 
had  been  closed  in  time  of  peace,  refused  to  regard 
our  trade  with  the  French  Indies  as  "neutral." 
She  seized  hundreds  of  our  vessels,  condemned  the 
cargoes,  destroyed  the  ships,  maltreated  and  im 
prisoned  the  seamen,  or  impressed  them  into  ser 
vice  on  British  men-of-war.  Orders  in  Council  of 
the  summer  and  autumn  of  1793  instructed  British 
captains  first  to  stop  vessels  loaded  with  corn,  flour, 
or  meal  bound  for  France,  and  later  all  ships  carry 
ing  products  of  the  French  colonies  or  conveying 
food  to  French  colonies.  This  arbitrary  extension 
of  the  list  of  contraband  of  war  was  a  violation 
of  the  code  of  international  law.  It  aimed  at  the 


188  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

starvation  of  France.  Great  Britain  determined 
that  in  this  war  "  there  should  be  no  neutrals." 

In  the  early  spring  of  1794  war  with  Great  Britain 
seemed  inevitable,  even  to  "most  of  our  good,  cool 
men  of  Boston/ '  as  a  merchant  of  that  town  wrote 
to  Secretary  Knox.  Dayton,  of  New  Jersey,  pro 
posed  in  Congress  that  debts  due  to  English  sub 
jects  be  sequestrated  and  the  amount  paid  into  the 
treasury  of  the  United  States  to  indemnify  the 
American  merchants  who  had  been  despoiled  by 
England's  cruisers.  A  bill  to  suspend  all  commer 
cial  intercourse  with  Great  Britain  until  she  made 
reparation  for  her  aggressions  and  delivered  up  the 
Western  fur-posts  which  she  still  held  in  defiance  of 
the  treaty  of  1783,  was  defeated  only  by  the  casting 
vote  of  John  Adams  in  the  Senate.  Lord  Dorches 
ter,  the  governor  of  Canada,  added  fuel  to  the 
flames  by  a  speech  to  a  delegation  of  hostile  Indians 
of  our  Northwest,  in  which  he  tried  to  rouse  them 
to  a  campaign  to  regain  their  lost  lands  by  telling 
them  that  it  was  probable  that  England  and  America 
would  be  at  war  within  a  year.  Congress  voted 
bills  to  fortify  our  harbors  and  build  frigates.  The 
artillery  service  was  strengthened  and  a  levy  of 
eighty  thousand  militia  authorized.  The  seaport 
towns  sent  memorials  to  Congress  breathing  defi 
ance.  Three  thousand  men  actually  began  to  drill 
at  Marblehead,  Massachusetts. 

But   other   counsels   prevailed.    To   avoid   both 


THE  REPUBLICAN  TRIUMPH        189 

war  and  the  interruption  of  our  commerce  with 
England,  Washington  sent  John  Jay,  chief  justice 
of  the  supreme  court,  as  envoy  extraordinary  to 
London  to  smooth  out  our  difficulties.  The  treaty 
which  Jay  brought  home  after  several  months  la 
bor  with  the  British  ministers  was  more  meagre 
even  than  the  proverbial  "half  a  loaf."  It  was 
silent  on  the  major  questions  of  impressments  and 
the  repeal  of  the  odious  Orders  in  Council,  and 
granted  only  niggardly  concessions  to  our  West 
Indian  traders.  It  was  so  unpopular  in  the  seaport 
towns  that  Jay  was  burned  in  effigy  in  Boston  and 
Hamilton  was  struck  in  the  face  by  a  brick-bat  while 
defending  it  in  an  open-air  meeting  at  New  York. 
Yet  it  was  ratified,  by  the  bare  two-thirds  vote  of 
the  Senate  necessary,  in  deference  to  Washington's 
conviction  that  the  alternative  was  a  war  with 
Great  Britain,  which  we  could  ill  afford  to  wage. 

Naturally,  the  Republicans  made  great  capital 
put  of  the  Jay  Treaty.  They  had  a  rejoinder  now 
to  the  charge  of  their  subserviency  to  France  in  the 
days  of  the  Genet  mission.  "  Mr.  Jay's  representa 
tion  was  not  in  the  stile  of  a  firm  demand  for  com 
pensation  for  injuries  done  to  our  citizens,"  wrote  a 
prominent  Republican  lawyer  of  Virginia  to  Madi 
son,  "but  rather  supplicating  the  benevolence  of 
his  Brittanic  Majesty  for  relief."  Jefferson  called 
the  treaty  "an  execrable  thing,"  "an  infamous  act 
which  is  really  nothing  more  [less]  than  a  treaty  of 


190  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

alliance  between  England  and  the  Anglomen  of  this 
country  against  the  Legislature1  and  the  people  of 
the  United  States. "  He  maintained  that  a  policy 
of  firmness,  by  which  he  meant  enforcement  of  non- 
intercourse,  would  have  brought  England  to  terms. 
In  the  light  of  his  policy  of  " firmness"  when  applied 
a  dozen  years  later  by  President  Jffferson,  we  can 
see  the  superior  wisdom  of  Washington's  course, 
but  to  the  Republicans  of  1794  Jefferson's  untested 
theory  carried  the  recommendation  of  the  prestige 
of  his  name.  And  they  were  fortified  in  their  con 
tention  that  the  treaty  embroiled  rather  than  ame 
liorated  our  foreign  relations,  by  alienating  our  only 
friend  in  the  vain  attempt  to  conciliate  our  most 
dangerous  enemy,  when  news  came  of  its  reception 
in  France. 

James  Monroe,  a  Virginia  Republican,  had  been 
appointed  minister  to  the  French  Republic  at  the 
same  time  that  Jay  was  sent  to  England.  His  in 
structions  contained  the  superfluous  injunction  to 
cultivate  good  relations  with  France,  and  expressly 
warranted  him  to  say  that  the  projected  negotiations 
with  Great  Britain  concerned  only  the  settlement  of 

1  Because  the  lower  house  of  Congress  had  passed  a  non-inter 
course  act  with  Great  Britain,  which  was  defeated  only  by  John 
Adams's  casting  vote  in  the  Senate.  Jefferson  wrote  sarcastically 
of  this  vote:  "The  Senate  was  intended  as  a  check  on  the  will  of  the 
Representatives  when  too  hasty.  They  are  not  only  that,  but  com 
pletely  so  on  the  will  of  the  people.  ...  I  have  never  known  a 
measure  more  universally  desired  by  the  people  than  the  passage 
of  that  bill," 


THE  REPUBLICAN  TRIUMPH        191 

some  controversies  arising  out  of  the  interpretation 
of  the  treaty  of  peace  of  1783,  and  would  in  no  wise 
impair  our  alliance  of  1778  with  France.  The  nego 
tiation,  then,  of  a  new  treaty  with  Great  Britain 
which  seemed  to  make  us  her  accomplice  in  a  pred 
atory  war  on  French  commerce,  appeared  with  not 
a  little  show  of  v"  astice  to  the  government  at  Paris 
as  an  unfriendly  and  even  a  treacherous  act.  It 
greatly  embarrassed  Monroe,  who  had  given  hos 
tages  to  the  French  Republic  in  the  shape  of  ex 
traordinary  protestations  of  sympathy.  Whether 
he  sinned  more  against  diplomatic  reserve  than  he 
was  sinned  against  by  Federalist  disavowal  is  a 
question  which  his  friends  and  his  opponents  have 
not  ceased  to  argue.  At  any  rate,  after  reading 
some  sharp  letters  of  rebuke  from  the  acrid  pen  of 
Secretary  Pickering,  he  was  recalled  by  Washington, 
and  returned  to  America  to  contribute  his  bit  to 
the  Republican  cause  by  the  publication  of  an 
apology  for  his  conduct  in  a  volume  of  over  five 
hundred  pages.  Needless  to  say,  Jefferson  did  not 
discourage  its  sale. 

While  Jay  was  busy  negotiating  his  treaty  an 
event  occurred  at  home  which  furnished  more  grist 
for  the  Republican  mill.  Hamilton's  excise  tax, 
ever  since  its  passage  in  1791,  had  been  resisted  by 
the  distillers  of  the  back  counties  in  the  Central 
and  Southern  States.  The  whiskey  which  they 
made  was  not  merely  a  deleterious  luxury.  It 


192  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

served  as  currency  in  a  region  where  bank  paper 
was  scarce  and  specie  almost  unknown.  To  tax  it 
for  the  support  of  the  capitalist's  currency  on  the 
seaboard  seemed  like  a  hard  and  unjust  discrimina 
tion.  The  farmer  distillers  of  western  Pennsylvania 
broke  out  into  a  riot  against  the  tax-collectors  in 
the  summer  of  1794.  It  was  the  first  sectional  con 
flict  and  the  first  test  of  the  authority  of  the  central 
government  under  the  new  Constitution.  President 
Washington  called  fifteen  thousand  militia  from 
Pennsylvania,  New  Jersey,  Maryland,  and  Virginia, 
and  sent  them  against  the  insurgents,  who  dis 
persed  before  a  force  several  times  larger  than  they 
could  hope  to  resist.  A  few  of  the  ringleaders  were 
seized  and  brought  to  trial.  Two  were  found  guilty 
of  treason  and  condemned  to  death,  but  they  were 
pardoned  by  the  President. 

The  " Whiskey  War"  was  denounced  in  unmea 
sured  terms  by  the  Republicans  as  a  cruel  parade 
of  force  to  support  an  "infernal  law."  Jefferson 
saw  no  justification  in  "arming  one  part  of  society 
against  another,"  and  "declaring  civil  war  the  mo 
ment  before  the  meeting  of  that  body  [Congress] 
which  has  the  sole  right  to  declare  war";  in  "being 
so  patient  of  the  kicks  and  scoffs  of  our  enemies 
[England]  and  rising  at  a  feather  against  our  friends" ; 
in  "adding  a  million  to  the  public  debt"  for  the 
sake  of  crushing  out  a  spirit  of  independence  among 
our  own  citizens.  The  Federalists,  on  the  other 


THE  REPUBLICAN  TRIUMPH       193 

hand,  called  the  prompt  action  of  the  government 
the  salvation  of  the  country.  They  maintained 
that  the  rebellion  was  "the  legitimate  fruit  of  the 
doctrines  of  the  French  Revolution/ '  which  were 
spreading  in  our  country  and  paving  the  way  for 
anarchy  and  mob  violence.  Washington  shared 
this  view.  On  quitting  the  expedition  at  Bedford, 
he  told  the  militia  that  they  were  engaged  in  a  ser 
vice  which  was  "nothing  less  than  to  consolidate 
and  preserve  the  blessings  of  that  Revolution  which 
at  such  expense  of  blood  and  treasure  constituted 
us  a  free  and  independent  nation."  In  his  speech 
at  the  opening  of  Congress  a  few  weeks  later  he 
attributed  the  disorder  to  "certain  self-created 
societies,"  "combinations  of  men  who,  disregarding 
the  truth  that  those  who  rouse  cannot  always  ap 
pease  a  civil  commotion,  disseminate  suspicions, 
jealousies,  and  accusations  of  the  whole  Govern 
ment."  "If  these  self -created  societies  cannot  be 
discountenanced,"  he  wrote  Secretary  of  State  Ran 
dolph,  "they  will  destroy  the  Government  of  the 
country." 

The  Republicans,  with  Jefferson  in  the  lead,  took 
up  the  cudgels  for  the  defense  of  freedom  of  dis 
cussion  and  criticism.  "It  is  wonderful,"  wrote 
Jefferson,  commenting  on  the  President's  speech  to 
Congress,  "that  he  should  have  permitted  himself 
to  be  the  organ  of  such  an  attack"  on  these  funda 
mental  liberties.  The  denunciation  of  the  Demo- 


194  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

cratic  societies,  he  said,  was  "one  of  the  extraordi 
nary  acts  of  boldness  of  which  we  have  seen  so  many 
from  the  faction  of  Monocrats."  As  a  matter  of 
fact  the  Democrats  aimed  at  "destroying  the  gov 
ernment  "  of  the  country  only  as  the  government 
was  identical  with  the  Federalist  administration. 
They  wanted  to  "overthrow  the  government"  in 
the  European  sense  of  the  phrase.  To  the  Consti 
tution  and  the  Union  they  professed  an  utter  devo 
tion,  but  declared  that  it  was  "the  duty  of  every 
freeman  to  regard  with  attention  and  discuss  with 
out  fear  the  conduct  of  public  servants  in  every 
department  of  government" — a  doctrine  of  social 
as  well  as  political  offense  to  the  "ruling  classes"  of 
the  eighteenth  century.  The  "liberal  communica 
tion  of  Republican  sentiments,"  which  they  advo 
cated  as  the  "best  antidote  to  political  poison,"  gen 
erally  took  the  form  of  bitter  attacks  on  the  persons 
as  well  as  the  measures  of  the  Federalist  leaders, 
who  were  charged  openly  with  "an  amazing  want 
of  republicanism."  Washington's  Proclamation  of 
Neutrality,  for  example,  was  condemned  as  an  act 
of  "Ottoman  tyranny  worthy  of  the  grand  Sultan 
of  Constantinople."  The  militia  marching  under 
the  eye  of  Hamilton  to  quell  the  whiskey  riots  were 
"Janissaries  executing  the  orders  of  the  Grand 
Vizier."  All  this  was  provoking  and  much  of  it 
puerile,  but  the  Federalists  made  the  mistake  of 
meeting  this  Republican  criticism  with  a  persecution 


THE  REPUBLICAN  TRIUMPH        195 

which  culminated  in  the  arbitrary  acts  of  repression 
and  censorship  under  John  Adams. 

The  refusal  of  Washington  to  serve  a  third  term 
made  the  presidential  election  of  1796  the  first  na 
tional  struggle  between  the  two  parties.  No  for 
mal  nominations  were  made.  Jefferson,  by  common 
consent,  was  the  Republican  candidate,  with  Aaron 
Burr  as  the  favorite  for  the  second  place.  The  Fed 
eralists  were  not  so  united.  John  Adams  had  every 
claim  to  be  recognized  as  the  leader  of  the  party 
after  Washington's  retirement,  but  Alexander  Ham 
ilton  had  acquired  the  habit  of  dictatorship  over  the 
cabinet  and  a  large  part  of  Congress,  and  he  was 
loath  to  see  a  man  of  Adams's  independence  in  the 
presidential  chair.  By  the  end  of  the  summer, 
however,  it  was  generally  expected  that  the  Federal 
ist  electors  would  cast  their  votes  for  John  Adams 
and  Thomas  Pinckney.  The  campaign  was  a  vio 
lent  one,  each  party  accusing  the  other  of  doctrines 
and  practices  destructive  to  the  republic  and  of  dis 
graceful  vassalage  to  a  foreign  power.  Washington's 
serious  warning  against  the  "spirit  of  faction,"  in 
his  Farewell  Address  of  September  17,  1796,  fell  on 
unheeding  ears.  When  the  electoral  votes  were 
counted  in  January,  Adams  had  seventy-one,  Jef 
ferson  sixty-eight,  Pinckney  fifty-nine,  and  Burr 
thirty,  while  the  forty-eight  remaining  votes  were 
scattered  among  nine  other  names.  Adams  and 
Jefferson,  therefore,  were  chosen.  Jefferson,  by  a 


196  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

strange  irony,  owed  his  elevation  to  the  vice-presi 
dency  to  his  arch-enemy,  Alexander  Hamilton.1 

The  vice-presidency  furnished  Jefferson  an  ideal 
vantage-ground  for  the  consolidation  of  his  party. 
Without  any  official  responsibility  beyond  wielding 
the  gavel  in  the  Senate,  he  was  at  the  seat  of  the 
government,  where  he  could  watch  the  men  and 
study  the  measures  of  the  administration  at  first 
hand,  and  through  his  indefatigable  correspondence 
keep  his  lieutenants  in  the  various  States  fully  in 
formed  of  the  trend  of  national  affairs.  At  first  he 
seems  to  have  had  hopes  of  "converting"  Adams  to 
the  Republican  party,  for  he  and  Adams  were  much 
closer  together  than  either  was  to  Hamilton. 

The  two  men  called  on  each  other  in  Philadelphia 
before  the  inauguration  and  discussed  the  foreign 
situation.  Adams  expressed  the  wish  that  Jefferson 
might  undertake  a  special  mission  to  France,  "if  the 
people  would  be  willing  to  spare  him  for  a  short 
time."  When  Jefferson  declined  the  honor,  Adams 
asked  him  to  sound  his  friend  Madison  on  the  prop 
osition.  A  few  days  later  Adams  and  Jefferson  were 
dining  with  Washington,  and  left  the  house  together. 
"As  soon  as  we  got  into  the  street,"  says  Jefferson, 

1  Hamilton  was  suspected  by  the  New  England  Federalists  of  a 
plot  to  bring  in  Pinckney  just  ahead  of  Adams  by  getting  one  or 
two  Federalist  electors  from  the  Southern  States  to  leave  Adams's 
name  off  their  ballots.  To  thwart  this  trick  sixteen  New  England 
electors  wrote  the  name  of  Ellsworth  or  Jay  for  the  second  place  on 
the  ticket,  thus  reducing  Pinckney's  vote  not  only  far  below  Adams's 
but  below  Jefferson's,  too. 


THE  REPUBLICAN  TRIUMPH        197 

"I  told  him  the  event  of  my  negotiations  with  Mr. 
Madison.  He  immediately  said  that  on  consulta 
tion  some  objections  to  that  nomination  had  been 
raised  .  .  .  and  was  going  on  with  excuses  which 
evidently  embarrassed  him,  when  we  came  to  Fifth 
Street,  where  our  roads  separated.  .  .  .  He  never 
after  that  said  one  word  to  me  on  the  subject  or 
ever  consulted  me  as  to  any  measures  of  the  gov 
ernment."  So  it  was  Adams,  not  Jefferson,  who 
abandoned  the  idea  of  "fusion."  He  had  had  his 
first  cabinet  meeting  that  morning ! 

A  few  days  after  the  inauguration  news  came  that 
the  Federalist  minister,  C.  C.  Pinckney,  whom 
Washington  had  sent  to  Paris  to  succeed  Monroe, 
had  been  denied  an  audience  by  the  Directory  and 
refused  even  the  permission  to  remain  on  the  soil 
of  France.  Adams,  while  resenting  the  insult  in  a 
spirited  message  to  Congress,  was  sincerely  anxious 
to  preserve  peace  with  France.  He  nominated  John 
Marshall,  a  Virginia  Federalist,  and  Elbridge  Gerry, 
of  Massachusetts,  a  recent  convert  to  Republican 
ism,  to  join  Pinckney  in  a  commission  to  Paris  to 
bring  the  French  Directory  to  reason.  The  com 
missioners  arrived  in  Paris  in  the  early  winter  of 
1797,  but  their  treatment  was  even  worse  than 
Pinckney's  had  been.  The  wily  Talleyrand,  minis 
ter  of  foreign  affairs,  did  not  deign  to  receive  or 
recognize  them  officially,  but  instead  sent  obscure 
agents,  who  told  them  that  no  negotiations  could  be 


198  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

begun  until  an  apology  was  made  for  the  language 
of  President  Adams's  message  to  Congress  and  a 
substantial  sum  of  money  paid  to  the  directors. 
Marshall  and  Pinckney  quitted  France  in  high  in 
dignation,  while  Gerry  was  flattered  into  remaining 
as  a  persona  grata  to  continue  the  negotiations.  He 
was  really  a  hostage  in  Talleyrand's  hands.  When 
the  news  of  this  fresh  indignity  reached  America 
early  in  March,  1798,  Adams  sent  a  message  to 
Congress  which  was  virtually  a  call  to  arms.  Mar 
shall  landed  the  next  month,  and  was  received  like 
a  Regulus  returned  from  Carthage.  He  was  ac 
claimed  in  the  streets  and  feted  at  banquets.  The 
toast  "  Millions  for  defense,  but  not  one  cent  -for 
tribute"  ran  through  the  States  as  the  slogan  of 
America's  defiance. 

The  Republicans  tried  to  make  the  best  of  a  poor 
case.  Jefferson  called  the  President's  message  "in 
sane."  The  Federalists,  he  declared,  were  deter 
mined  to  have  a  war  with  France,  else  why  their 
readiness  to  take  the  reported  insults  of  a  trio  of 
irresponsible  swindlers  (Talleyrand's  agents)  as  the 
act  of  the  French  Government.  Did  not  Talley 
rand's  invitation  to  Gerry  to  stay  in  Paris  show 
that  he  was  desirous  of  reaching  an  understanding 
with  the  United  States?  The  British  were  our  real 
enemies.  Even  at  that  moment  their  depredations 
on  our  commerce,  as  the  books  of  the  merchants  of 
Boston,  Philadelphia,  and  Baltimore  showed,  were 


THE  REPUBLICAN  TRIUMPH        199 

far  more  serious  than  the  Frenchmen's.  Jay's  "in 
famous"  treaty  was  the  root  of  all  the  trouble. 
And  it  was  a  futile  sacrifice  of  honor,  too.  In  the 
very  first  year  after  its  promulgation;  the  Republican 
press  claimed^  the  British  had  seized  three  hundred 
American  ships  and  impressed  one  thousand  Ameri 
can  seamen.  But  the  Republican  case  broke  down 
completely  when  Adams  ordered  Secretary  Pickering 
to  send  to  Congress,  and  Congress  voted  to  publish, 
the  correspondence  of  the  commissioners  with  the 
French  agents. 

The  "X  Y  Z"  correspondence1  kindled  the  war 
spirit  in  America.  Congress  in  a  score  of  acts 
passed  before  midsummer  of  1798  enlarged  the 
army,  built  and  purchased  ships,  created  a  navy 
department,  strengthened  the  coast  defenses,  sta 
tioned  squadrons  in  the  West  Indies,  authorized  our 
vessels  to  take  French  privateers  and  ships  of  war, 
and  formally  repealed  the  treaty  of  alliance  of  1778. 
Washington  was  made  commander  of  the  army  with 
the  right  to  name  his  staff  of  major-generals.  "On 
the  Fourth  of  July,"  wrote  Troup  to  Rufus  King, 
"New  York  City  resembled  a  camp  rather  than  a 
commercial  port."  Loyal  addresses  poured  in  on 
the  President.  The  theatres  and  concert-halls  rang 
with  the  new  patriotic  songs,  "Hail,  Columbia,"  and 


1  So  called  because  Pickering  substituted  these  letters  for  the 
names  of  Talleyrand's  agents  when  he  sent  the  correspondence  to 
Congress. 


200  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

"Adams  and  Liberty."    For  one  brief  hour  John 
Adams  was  popular. 

Then  came  a  series  of  acts  by  the  Federalist  Con 
gress  in  June  and  July,  which  were  dictated  by  a 
mixture  of  panic  and  arrogance,  acts  not  unlike  those 
of  the  French  Jacobins,  whom  the  Federalists  held 
in  abhorrence.  A  Naturalization  Act  required  aliens 
who  had  come  to  America  since  1795  to  reside  here 
fourteen  years  before  they  could  become  citizens. 
Alien  Acts  gave  the  President  the  power  to  remove 
all  "such  aliens  as  he  should  judge  dangerous  to  the 
peace  and  safety  of  the  United  States."  A  Sedi 
tion  Act  imposed  the  penalty  of  fine  and  imprison 
ment  on  all  who  should  forcibly  oppose  the  execu 
tion  of  the  laws  of  the  United  States,  or  should 
publish  a  false  or  malicious  writing  against  the  gov 
ernment  of  the  United  States,  the  President,  or 
Congress.  The  Naturalization  Act,  while  harsh, 
was  entirely  within  the  constitutional  powers  of 
Congress.  The  Alien  Acts,  while  causing  some 
foreigners  to  leave  the  country,  were  not  enforced 
in  a  single  instance  by  President  Adams.  But  the 
Sedition,, Act  led  to  what  John  Randolph  called  "the 
American  Reign  of  Terror."  Men  were  indicted, 
fined,  and  imprisoned  for  such  criticism  of  the  ex 
ecutive  as  nowadays  would  be  thought  tame  and 
comical:  for  saying  that  Adams  was  "hardly  in  the 
infancy  of  political  blundering,"  or  for  expressing 
the  pious  wish,  as  a  New  Jersey  Republican  did, 


THE  REPUBLICAN  TRIUMPH        201 

that  the  wadding  of  a  cannon  fired  in  honor  of  John 
Adams  might  lodge  in  the  seat  of  his  breeches. 
The  Republican  editors  and  printers  were  perse 
cuted  with  an  almost  ferocious  zeal  by  the  courts. 
A  Federalist  judge  of  the  supreme  court,  Samuel 
Chase,  was  so  savage  i&  the  prosecution  of  the  trials 
that  he  was  later  impeached  by  a  Republican  House 
of  Representatives. 

Jefferson  and  his  followers  protested  against  the 
Alien  and  Sedition  Acts  as  a  clear  violation  of  the 
Constitution,  which  guarantees  freedom  of  speech 
and  press,  and  which  reserves  to  the  States  all 
powers  not  expressly  delegated  to  the  central  gov 
ernment.  The  federal  courts,  they  declared,  had 
a  right  to  take  cognizance  only  of  those  criminal 
cases  which  were  mentioned  in  the  Constitution. 
The  Constitution  was  a  compact  between  the 
States  which  federal  officials  had  no  right  to  assume 
to  interpret  definitively.  These  ideas  were  em 
bodied  most  clearly  in  a  set  of  resolutions  prepared 
by  Jefferson  for  introduction  into  the  legislature  of 
North  Carolina,  but  transferred  to  Kentucky,  in 
December,  1798.  The  Kentucky  Resolutions  de 
clared  the  Alien  and  Sedition  Acts  "void  and  of 
no  force/'  and  called  upon  the  "  co-States "  to  join 
with  Kentucky  in  protest.  When  the  Northern 
States  replied  unfavorably  and  the  Southern  States 
not  at  all,  the  Kentucky  Legislature  adopted  a  sec 
ond  set  of  resolutions  from  Jefferson's  pen  (Novem- 


202  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

ber,  1799)  declaring  that  "nullification"  by  the 
State  "sovereignties"  was  the  "rightful  remedy"  for 
federal  usurpation.  This  was  the  first  announce 
ment  of  the  policy  which  South  Carolina  put  into 
operation  a  generation  later,  and  which  a  generation 
later  still  grew  into  the  formidable  doctrine  of 
secession. 

Jefferson  has  been  not  only  blamed  for  encourag 
ing  disunion  in  the  Kentucky  Resolutions,  but  also 
ridiculed  for  entertaining  baseless  fears.  Either 
charge  is  hard  to  prove  in  the  light  of  contemporary 
evidence.  Jefferson  was  far  ahead  of  the  public 
sentiment  of  the  day  in  his  devotion  to  the  Union. 
He  wrote  to  Elbridge  Gerry  a  month  after  the  reso 
lutions  were  passed:  "I  do  with  a  sincere  zeal  wish 
an  inviolable  preservation  of  our  Federal  Constitu 
tion  according  to  the  true  sense  in  which  it  was 
adopted  by  the  States."  To  the  sincerity  of  this 
vow  his  voluminous  writings  bear  testimony.  He 
rebuked  speculations  on  disunion,  whether  they 
came  from  friends  like  Taylor,  or  enemies  like 
.  Hamilton  and  Wolcott.  His  object  in  the  Ken- 
1  tucky  Resolutions  was  decentralization,  not  dis- 
[  union.  Indeed,  it  was  just  exactly  the  destruction 

I  of  the  Federal  Union  through  its  conversion  into  a 
consolidated  despotism  that  he  believed  he  was 
working  to  prevent.  He  considered  the  Alien  and 
Sedition  Acts  "  merely  an  experiment  on  the  Ameri 
can  mind  to  see  how  far  it  will  bear  an  avowed  vio- 


THE  REPUBLICAN  TRIUMPH        203 

lation  of  the  Constitution/'  and  thought  that  if  they 
were  swallowed  by  the  people  other  acts  would  follow, 
such  as  a  life  term  for  President  and  senators,  or  "the 
transfer  of  the  succession  to  the  President's  heirs." 
"That  Jefferson  ever  wrote  such  folly/'  says  Mc- 
Master,  "is  of  itself  enough  to  deprive  him  of  every 
possible  claim  to  statesmanship."    But  we  have 
abundant  testimony  that  Hamilton  was  looking  for 
"the  crisis/'  even  if  it  came  by  arms,  which  should 
convert  the  "frail  and  worthless  fabric  of  our  Con 
stitution"  into  something  nearer  the  admired  Eng 
lish  model.    He  and  King  and  Gouverneur  Morris 
and  other  Federalists  corresponded  quite  frankly  on  \ 
the  prospects  of  establishing  an  American  empire  \ 
on  "foundations  much  firmer  than  have  yet  been  / 
devised."    Morris  confessed  a  few  years  after  Ham-/ 
ilton's  death  that  "Hamilton  disliked  the  Constitu 
tion,  believing  all  Republican  governments  radical! 
defective."    He  had  assented  to  the  Constitutio 
because  he  thought  it  "might  hold  us  together  fo 
a  time;  but  he  trusted  that  in  the  changes  and 
chances  of  time  we  should  be  involved  in  some  war" 
[the  "crisis"]  " which  might  strengthen  our  Union 
and  nerve  the  executive."    Jefferson  may  have  let 
his  fears  get  the  better  of  his  judgment,  just  as  his 
Federalist  opponents  did  when,  like  Uriah  Tracy, 
they  spoke  of  the  Democrats  as  "worthy  of  the  gal 
lows/'  or,  like  Fisher  Ames,  that  such  a  government 
as  Jefferson  preferred  "would  soon  ensure  war  with 


204  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

/Great  Britain,  a  Cisalpine  Alliance  with  France, 
plunder  and  anarchy."    But  to  call  Jefferson's  fears 
^groundless  or  the  expression  of  them   "folly"  is 
I  rather  to  estimate  the  security  of  the  Union  of  1798 
(Jjy  the  results  of  the  struggle  of  1861-5. 

Passions  ran  high  in  those  closing  years  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  when  the  moderating  effect  of 
Washington's  presence  was  removed.  "Men  who 
had  been  lifelong  friends,"  wrote  Jefferson,  "crossed 
the  street  to  avoid  saluting  each  other."  We  were 
actually  at  war  with  France  on  the  ocean,  yet  the 
French  faction  in  America  were  loudly  insisting  that 
the  enemy  was  England.  There  was  little  in  fact  to 
choose  between  the  two  countries  in  the  matter  of 
depredations  on  our  commerce.  Fortunately  for 
our  peace,  offers  of  conciliation  came  from  France. 
Talleyrand  wanted  only  to  embroil  us  with  Great 
Britain.  When  he  saw  the  effect  of  the  X  Y  Z  let 
ters  on  America  he  changed  his  tactics.  With  char 
acteristic  effrontery  he  denied  all  connection  with 
his  insulting  agents  and  assured  our  envoy  at  The 
Hague  that  a  minister  from  the  United  States  would 
be  received  in  Paris  "with  the  respect  due  to  a  free, 
independent,  and  powerful  nation."  President 
Adams,  to  the  disgust  of  the  Hamiltonians,  who 
were  bent  on  war,1  and  to  his  own  eternal  credit, 

1  It  is  hard  to  absolve  Hamilton  from  the  charge  of  deliberately 
fomenting  the  war  spirit  in  order  that  he,  as  ranking  major-general 
and  commander  in  the  field,  might  have  an  army  to  use  in  his  cher 
ished  plan  of  co-operation  with  the  Venezuelan  adventurer,  Miranda, 


THE  REPUBLICAN  TRIUMPH        205 

again  sent  a  commission  to  Paris,  in  October,  1799. 
Before  they  arrived,  however,  Napoleon  Bonaparte 
had  overthrown  the  corrupt  directory  by  the  coup 
d'etat  of  Brumaire,  and  made  himself  master  of 
France  under  the  title  of  First  Consul.  Bonaparte 
posed  as  a  republican  and  a  reconciler.  He  sought 
peace  to  prepare  for  conquest.  He  was  a  man  of 
armies  and  diplomacy,  a  continental  man.  Sea 
power  or  the  economics  of  trade  he  never  under 
stood.  He  boasted  that  he  would  "make  commerce 
manoeuvre  like  battalions."  America  was  remote 
and  negligible  as  yet.  Napoleon  offered  to  release 
us  from  the  treaty  of  alliance  of  1778  if  we  would 
waive  our  claims  on  France  for  unlawful  seizures  of 
our  vessels.  The  formal  convention  restoring  peace 
between  the  United  States  and  France  was  signed 
September  30,  1800. 

Our  country  was  already  in  the  midst  of  another 
violent  presidential  campaign  in  which  Adams  and 

in  freeing  the  Spanish  colonies  and  bringing  them  under  Anglo- 
American  influence  to  balance  the  power  of  France.  Hamilton  wrote 
to  Miranda  in  August,  1798,  the  very  month  that  Talleyrand  was 
offering  peace  to  our  minister  in  Holland:  "The  plan  in  my  opinion 
ought  to  be  a  fleet  of  Great  Britain  and  an  army  of  the  United 
States,  and  a  government  for  the  liberated  territory  agreeable  to  both 
the  codperators,  about  which  there  will  be  no  difficulty.  To  arrange  the 
plan  a  competent  authority  from  Great  Britain  to  some  person  here 
is  the  best  expedient.  Your  presence  here  in  that  case  will  be  ex 
tremely  essential.  We  are  raising  an  army  of  about  12,000  men. 
General  Washington  has  resumed  his  station  at  the  head  of  the 
armies,  I  am  second  in  command. 

"  With  esteem  and  regard, 

"Alexander  Hamilton." 


206  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

Jefferson  were  again  the  candidates,  with  C.  C. 
Pinckney  and  Aaron  Burr  for  second  place.  The 
Federalists  were  torn  with  faction.  The  persecu 
tions  under  the  Sedition  Act  had  neutralized  the 
brief  popularity  of  the  administration  after  the 
X  Y  Z  disclosures.  Adams's  courageous  peace  with 
France  had  brought  down  anathemas  on  his  head. 
Hamilton,  with  his  chances  of  military  glory  gone 
glimmering  and  his  friends  removed  from  the  cabi 
net,  wrote  a  bitter  invective  against  John  Adams 
to  prove  his  unsuitableness  for  the  chief  magistracy 
—and  then  urged  the  Federalists  to  vote  for  him. 
War  taxes  for  a  war  that  was  never  declared  and 
that  was  unrecognized  by  half  the  country  increased 
the  dissatisfaction  with  the  administration.  The 
physician  for  the  country's  ills  was  already  at  hand, 
said  Jefferson,  in  the  person  of  the  tax-collector. 
The  Federalists  hung  together  in  a  discordant  unity 
to  prevent  the  calamity  of  a  Republican  triumph; 
but  they  were  powerless  to  check  -the  rising  tide. 
Every  local  election  in  New  England  and  the  Middle 
States  showed  an  increase  in  the  vote,  and  the  in 
crease  was  largely  in  favor  of  the  Republicans.  Jef 
ferson  was  tireless  in  his  propaganda  and  unwearied 
in  his  patience.  He  noted  the  gain  of  a  Republican 
congressman  here  and  the  State  assemblyman  there; 
he  cheered  Madison  with  the  report  of  "a  consider 
able  change  working  in  the  minds  of  the  people  to 
the  eastward"  [New  England],  and  congratulated 


THE  REPUBLICAN  TRIUMPH        207 

Burr  on  the  visible  "dawn  of  change"  in  his  State 
of  New  York.  He  had  full  confidence  that  Repub 
licanism  was  growing  like  a  sound  tissue  to  possess 
the  whole  body  politic.  Patience  and  labor!  till 
"time  has  been  given  to  the  States  to  recover  from 
the  temporary  frenzy  into  which  they  have  been 
decoyed,  to  rally  round  the  Constitution  and  rescue 
it  from  the  destruction  with  which  it  has  been 
threatened."  Jefferson  hoped  even  to  convert  the 
Federalists,  while  they  expected  only  to  defeat  and 
awe  the  "Jacobins."  It  was  a  battle  between  in 
trenched  privilege  and  insurgent  democracy — be 
tween  the  expiring  eighteenth  century  and  the 
dawning  nineteenth. 

The  battle  was  close  and  fiercely  fought.  Jeffer 
son,  as  leader  of  the  "opposition,"  was  subjected  to 
extravagant  abuse.  He  was  accused  of  having 
robbed  a  widow  and  her  children  of  an  estate  of 
ten  thousand  pounds;  of  preaching  class  hatred  and 
"Jacobinical  phrensy";  of  slandering  George  Wash 
ington  and  ridiculing  the  Christian  religion.  The 
direst  predictions  were  made  in  the  event  of  his 
election.  Government  would  be  at  an  end  and 
civic  virtue  a  thing  of  the  past.  One  panic-stricken 
Federalist  declared  that  every  decent  man  would 
have  to  go  abroad  armed  "to  defend  his  property, 
his  wife,  and  children  .  .  .  from  the  daggers  of 
his  Jacobin  neighbors."  Old  ladies  in  Connecticut 
hid  their  family  Bibles,  believing  that  the  first  act 


208  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

of  the  "atheistic"  President  would  be  a  decree  con 
fiscating  all  copies  of  the  Sacred  Book.  Following 
his  custom,  Jefferson  ignored  these  attacks.  While 
he  was  contradicting  one  campaign  lie,  he  said,  they 
would  publish  twenty  new  ones. 

With  his  usual  political  sagacity,  Jefferson  de 
clared  that  as  New  York  City  went  the  election 
would  go.  And  so  it  was.  Aaron  Burr  arranged 
an  attractive  slate  of  the  city  candidates  for  the 
State  legislature  in  the  spring  election  of  1800. 
They  carried  the  city  and  insured  a  Republican 
majority  in  the  legislature  which  was  to  choose  the 
presidential  electors  in  November.  As  a  last  resort 
to  save  a  few  of  New  York's  votes  for  the  Federalist 
ticket,  Hamilton  wrote  a  letter  to  Governor  Jay, 
advising  him  to  reconvene  the  old  legislature  and 
put  through  a  law  for  the  choice  of  presidential 
electors  by  districts.  He  confessed  that  it  was  not 
a  "regular  or  delicate  proceeding,"  but  urged  that 
"scruples  of  delicacy  and  propriety  ought  to  be  laid 
aside"  when  it  was  a  question  of  preventing  the 
election  to  the  presidency  of  "an  atheist  in  religion 
and  a  fanatic  in  politics."  Governor  Jay  filed  the 
letter  with  the  indorsement:  "Proposing  measures 
for  party  purposes  which  I  think  it  would  not  be 
come  me  to  adopt." 

When  the  electoral  votes  were  counted  in  January, 
Jefferson  and  Burr  had  seventy-three  apiece,  to 
sixty-five  for  Adams  and  sixty-four  for  Pinckney. 


THE  REPUBLICAN  TRIUMPH        209 

Not  a  single  Republican  elector  had  been  thoughtful 
enough  to  vote  another  name  than  Burr's  for  second 
choice,  so  Jefferson  and  Burr  were  technically  tied 
for  the  presidency,  and  the  decision  was  thrown 
into  the  House  of  Representatives.  Burr  knew  that 
every  elector  had  intended  to  vote  for  him  for  Vice- 
President,  and,  had  he  been  an  honorable  man,  he 
would  have  given  first  place  to  Jefferson  immedi 
ately.  But  Burr  was  not  an  honorable  man.  He 
allowed  himself  to  be  put  forward  by  a  caucus  of  the 
Federalists  in  the  House  against  the  man  of  his  own 
party  who  was  obviously  the  choice  of  the  nation. 

When  the  balloting  began  in  the  House  on  Feb 
ruary  11,  1801,  Vermont  and  Maryland  were  equally 
divided,  and  lost  their  vote.  Of  the  other  fourteen 
States  six  voted  for  Burr  (New  Hampshire,  Massa 
chusetts,  Connecticut,  Rhode  Island,  Delaware, 
and  South  Carolina),  and  the  remaining  eight  for 
Jefferson.  Nine  States  were  the  majority  necessary 
for  an  election.  Day  after  day  the  balloting  was 
repeated  with  the  same  result.  There  were  rumors 
that  the  Federalists  would  continue  the  deadlock 
till  the  4th  of  March,  and  then  devolve  the  presi 
dency  on  John  Marshall,  who  had  just  been  ap 
pointed  by  John  Adams  as  chief  justice  of  the 
supreme  court.  The  two  great  States  of  Pennsylva 
nia  and  Virginia,  with  their  Republican  governors, 
McKean  and  Monroe,  were  ready  to  appeal  to  arms 
rather  than  see  Jefferson  cheated  out  of  the  presi- 


210  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

dency.  Hamilton,  too,  used  his  influence  in  behalf 
of  Jefferson,  not  that  he  loved  Jefferson  more,  but 
that  he  loved  Burr  less.  At  last  the  Federalists  in 
the  House  gave  up  the  hopeless  policy  of  obstruc 
tion.  On  the  thirty-sixth  ballot  the  Federalist 
members  of  all  the  States  except  New  England  cast 
blanks,  and  Jefferson  was  elected  by  a  vote  of  ten 
States  to  four.1 

Ousted  from  the  presidency  and  their  majority 
gone  in  Congress,  the  Federalists  attempted  to  keep 
control  of  the  third  branch  of  the  government  by  a 
reorganization  of  the  judiciary  in  the  last  days  of 
Adams's  term.  A  law  was  passed  creating  sixteen 
new  federal  judgeships,  with  a  number  of  marshals, 
attorneys,  and  clerks.  Adams  was  busy  until 
nine  o'clock  on  the  evening  of  March  3,  signing  the 
new  commissions.  Before  sunrise  on  the  morning 
of  the  4th  he  drove  away  from  the  White  House, 
and  the  reign  of  Federalism  was  ended.2 

1  The  vote  of  Maryland  was  still  divided,  and  Delaware  had  only 
one  representative  in  Congress,  the  Federalist  Bayard,  whose  vote 
could  at  any  moment  have  elected  Jefferson.     Jefferson,  without 
making  any  "capitulation"  to  the  Federalists,  seems  to  have  let  it 
be  understood  among  them  that  he  would  not  disturb  the  main 
institutions  of  the  government  if  elected  (bank,  tariff,  army  and 
navy).     He  had  no  hard  feeling  toward  Burr,  who,  to  his  credit  be 
it  said,  did  not  attempt  to  influence  the  members  of  the  House  in 
their  choice.     The  direst  effects  of  the  choice  of  "a  feeble  and  false 
enthusiast,   a  profligate  without  character  or  property   (!)"  for 
President  were  predicted  by  the  unreconciled  Federalists  of  New 
England. 

2  Two  persistent  fables  have  clung  to  the  last  days  of  Adams's 
presidency.     One  to  the  effect  that  Levi  Lincoln,  Jefferson's  desig 
nated  attorney-general,  appeared  with  watch  in  hand,  in  the  office 


THE  REPUBLICAN  TRIUMPH        211 

We  have  tarried  so  long  over  the  great  battle  of 
1800  because  it  is  the  central  fact  of  Thomas  Jeffer 
son's  career.  From  his  entrance  into  the  cabinet 
in  March,  1790,  to  his  entrance  into  the  White 
House  eleven  years  later,  he  waged  an  uninterrupted 
campaign  against  what  he  believed  to  be  a  deliber 
ate  plot  to  subvert  the  Constitution  and  nullify  the 
Declaration  of  Independence.  For  him  the  victory 
of  1800  was  the  vindication  of  the  principles  of 
1776.  He  was  not  overscrupulous  in  his  methods, 
though  he  never  descended  to  such  trickery  as  Ham 
ilton's  advice  to  Governor  Jay.  He  gave  secret  en 
couragement,  if  not  open  support,  to  such  writers 
as  Freneau,  Bache,  Duane,  and  Callender,  whose 
slanderous  articles  on  the  Federalist  leaders  tried 
their  patience  to  the  utmost.  His  compilation  of 
the  Anas,  with  their  gossipy  depreciation  of  the 
deeds  and  motives  of  his  political  adversaries,  was 
unchivalrous.  His  correspondence  too  often  shows 

of  the  State  Department  at  midnight  of  March  3,  to  order  John 
Marshall  to  discontinue  signing  the  commissions  of  the  new  judges 
— the  "midnight  judges  of  the  Duke  of  Braintree"  [Adams],  as 
the  Republicans  called  them.  But  Jefferson  used  the  term  "mid 
night"  in  connection  with  these  new  officers,  just  as  we  use  the 
phrase  "the  eleventh  hour/'  to  mean  late.  In  a  letter  of  March  24 
he  speaks  of  "Adams's  midnight  appointments,  to  wit,  all  after  De 
cember  12"  (the  day  on  which  the  defeat  of  the  Federalists  was  cer 
tainly  known).  The  other  story  is  that  Adams  left  the  White  House 
before  dawn  of  the  day  Jefferson  entered,  in  order  to  avoid  the 
humiliation  of  meeting  his  successor.  But  the  reason  for  Adams's 
hasty  departure  was  the  sudden  death  of  his  son  Charles  at  New 
York.  He  entertained  no  ill  feeling  toward  Jefferson,  and  wrote  to 
him  a  few  days  after  the  inauguration,  "heartily  wishing"  him  a 
"quiet  and  prosperous  administration." 


212  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

a  trace  of  that  satisfaction  which  men  who  are  of  a 
retiring  disposition  take  in  the  unburdening  of  their 
grievances  to  their  intimate  friends.  But  for  all 
these  faults  of  disposition  or  judgment,  there  was 
nothing  mean  or  base  in  Thomas  Jefferson.  He  was 
an  idealist  through  and  through.  His  whole  being 
was  devoted  to  his  cause.  And  it  is  not  the  least 
testimony  to  his  labors  for  democracy  that  since 
the  Republican  triumph  which  ushered  in  the  nine 
teenth  century  every  political  party  that  has  gained 
or  sought  the  direction  of  our  government  has  made 
its  appeal  to  the  people  of  America. 


CHAPTER  VIII 
JEFFERSON  THE  EXPANSIONIST 

A  just  and  solid  republican  government  maintained  here  will  be  a 
standing  monument  and  example  for  the  aim  and  imitation  of  the 
people  of  other  countries;  and  I  join  with  you  in  the  hope  and  belief 
that  they  will  see  from  our  example  that  a  free  government  is  of  all  others 
the  most  majestic.  (Jefferson  to  John  Dickinson,  March  6,  1801.) 

THOMAS  JEFFERSON  was  approaching  his  fifty-eighth 
birthday  when  he  entered  the  White  House.  The 
vigor  of  his  tall  spare  frame  was  somewhat  disguised 
by  a  studied  negligence  of  dress  and  carelessness  of 
posture;  and  the  incessant  activity  of  his  forceful, 
orderly  mind  was  concealed  beneath  an  ostentatious 
indifference  to  social  conventions.  He  was  anxious 
that  the  triumphant  democracy  of  which  he  was  the 
oracle  should  avoid  all  appearance  of  conformity 
to  the  Old  World  traditions  of  pomp  and  ceremony. 
He  held  no  stiff  levees  like  Washington's,  but  was 
easily  accessible  to  callers.  In  place  of  the  formal 
"speech  from  the  throne"  to  the  Houses  of  Congress, 
with  their  formal  reply  delivered  by  a  delegation,  he 
substituted  a  written  message  to  be  read  by  the 
clerk  of  the  House.  He  answered  a  petition  from 
the  merchants  of  New  Haven  with  his  own  pen. 
He  received  the  British  minister,  Anthony  Merry, 

213 


214  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

in  a  dressing-gown  with  slippers  run  down  at  the 
heels,  to  the  great  chagrin  of  that  gentleman  in  cor 
rect  diplomatic  tenue.  To  the  minister's  secre 
tary  he  made  an  appearance  very  much  like  that  of 
"a  tall,  large-boned  farmer" — a  characterization 
which  probably  would  have  pleased  Jefferson  rather 
than  nettled  him. 

Yet  there  was  nothing  coarse  or  boorish  about 
the  "Jeffersonian  simplicity/7  nothing  like  those 
revellings  of  King  Mob  amid  unlimited  orange 
punch  which  Webster  and  Story  describe  with  a 
kind  of  tolerant  disgust  in  their  accounts  of  the 
inauguration  of  Andrew  Jackson  a  generation  later. 
Jefferson  was  a  man  of  rare  accomplishments  and 
fine  tastes,  a  scholar,  a  diplomat,  a  musician.  He 
was  the  very  soul  of  hospitality,  keeping  in  the 
White  House  as  at  Monticello  an  open  table  at  which 
his  guests  were  cheered  by  good  fare  and  charmed 
by  brilliant  discourse.  His  wine  bills  for  the  first 
year  of  the  presidency  were  two  thousand  seven 
hundred  and  ninety-seven  dollars  and  thirty-eight 
cents.  His  pride  in  a  fine  stable  did  credit  to  the 
traditions  of  the  Virginia  aristocracy.  "His  inter 
ests,"  says  Henry  Adams,  "were  those  of  a  liberal 
European  nobleman  like  the  Due  de  Liancourt,"  a 
welcome  visitor  at  Monticello.  "He  seemed,"  says 
Adams  again,  "during  his  entire  life  to  breathe  with 
perfect  satisfaction  nowhere  except  in  the  liberal 
literary  and  scientific  air  of  the  Paris  of  1789."  The 


JEFFERSON  THE  EXPANSIONIST    215 

demagogues  of  the  Paris  of  1792,  the  Marats  and 
Desmoulins  and  Heberts  with  whom  his  Federalist 
opponents  compared  him,  would  have  filled  him 
with  disgust.  For  he  had  none  of  the  arts  of  the 
popular  orator  and  shrank  from  the  rude  blows  of 
public  controversy  with  a  sensitiveness  which  some 
of  his  biographers  have  called  timidity. 

Jefferson  regarded  the  victory  of  1800  not  as  a 
personal  triumph  or  a  mere  change  of  administra 
tion  only.  It  was  a  political  revolution,  furnishing 
the  first  opportunity  for  true  Republicans  to  admin 
ister  a  government  professedly  republican,  but  per 
verted  by  Hamilton  and  the  Essex  men1  into  a  sem 
blance  of  monarchy.  The  country  had  found  itself 
in  the  election  of  1800.  To  use  a  simile  which  Jef 
ferson  never  tired  of,  the  ship  of  state  had  righted 
itself  to  an  even  keel.  Ten  years  of  vigilant  labor 
and  patient  persuasion  had  organized  the  good  sense 
of  the  masses  into  a  compact  party,  and  now  deliv 
ered  into  the  hands  of  that  party  those  branches  of 
the  national  government  (executive  and  legislative) 
which  were  in  the  people's  gift.  Jefferson's  inaugu 
ral  address  was  a  hymn  of  reconciliation.  Harmony 
was  restored  except  for  the  few  malcontents  in  New 

lThe  "Essex  Junto"  was  a  name  applied  to  a  group  of  ultra- 
Federalists  (Ames,  Cabot,  Pickering,  Parsons,  Higginson)  whose 
activities  lay  chiefly  in  Essex  County,  Massachusetts.  Though 
their  faithful  followers  numbered  no  more  than  five  hundred,  accord 
ing  to  Ames's  confession,  their  wealth,  social  eminence,  and  alliance 
with  the  Congregational  clergy  gave  them  a  great  influence  in  the 
politics  of  Massachusetts  and  New  England. 


216  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

England  who  were  destined  to  dwindle  into  a  little 
factious  group  of  leaders  without  a  following.  "We 
have  called  by  different  names  bretheren  of  the 
same  principles/ '  cried  Jefferson.  "We  are  all  re 
publicans;  we  are  all  federalists  I"  He  spoke  of  the 
republic  as  "in  the  full  tide  of  a  successful  experi 
ment  "  under  a  government  "which  has  so  far  kept 
us  free  and  firm."  He  urged  that  we  "pursue  with 
courage  and  confidence  our  principles,"  and  pledged 
himself  to.  the  "preservation  of  the  general  Govern 
ment  in  its  whole  constitutional  vigor  as  the  sheet 
anchor  of  our  peace  at  home  and  safety  abroad." 
Not  a  word  of  the  bitter  battle  of  1800  or  the  ten 
years  opposition  to  the  "vigor"  of  the  general  gov 
ernment  under  the  Federalists !  Not  a  hint  that 
the  authors  of  the  Virginia  and  Kentucky  Resolu 
tions  had  come  to  sit  in  the  seats  vacated  by  Timo 
thy  Pickering  and  John  Adams!  What  did  these 
"amiable  professions  of  harmony"  mean  when  the 
whole  hated  structure  of  the  Hamiltonian  finances, 
with  debt,  bank,  funds,  excise,  stood  intact;  when 
the  Naturalization  Act  and  the  Enemies  Alien  Act 
still  disgraced  the  statute-books;  when  the  newly 
appointed  Federalist  judges  were  stretching  out 
their  hands  for  their  "midnight"  commissions;  when 
the  tax-gatherer  was  trying  to  meet  the  unprece 
dented  budget  of  over  eleven  million  dollars  caused 
by  the  "needless  quarrel"  with  France  over  the 
X  Y  Z  "frenzy"? 


JEFFERSON  THE  EXPANSIONIST    217 

If  we  turn  to  Jefferson's  private  correspondence 
during  the  few  months  after  he  entered  the  presi 
dential  office,  we  find  in  it  little  that  matches  the 
roseate  view  of  reconciliation  and  harmony  ex 
pressed  in  the  inaugural  address.  He  wrote  to 
Monroe  three  days  after  the  inauguration  that  he 
would  never  turn  an  inch  out  of  his  way  to  placate 
the  Federalist  leaders;  and  to  General  Gates  a  day 
later  that  he  hoped  to  make  up  an  administration 
which  should  "bid  defiance  to  the  plans  of  opposi 
tion  meditated"  by  them.  He  would  rebuke  "Mr. 
Adams'  indecent  conduct  in  crowding  nominations 
after  he  knew  they  were  not  for  himself/'  by  treat 
ing  such  nominations  "as  nullities."  To  his  attor 
ney-general,  Levi  Lincoln,  he  wrote  in  midsummer 
deploring  the  "inflexibility  of  the  federalist  spirit" 
in  Connecticut,  and  asked  for  a  list  of  "Essex  men" 
in  office  in  New  England  with  a  view  to  their  re 
moval.  Commenting  on  his  first  annual  message 
of  December,  1801,  in  a  letter  to  Dupont  de 
Nemours,  he  excused  himself  for  not  having  at 
tacked  the  financial  system  inherited  from  Alexan 
der  Hamilton.  "It  mortifies  me,"  he  wrote,  "to  be 
strengthening  principles  which  I  deem  radically 
vicious,  but  this  vice  is  entailed  on  us  by  the  first 
error.  In  other  parts  of  our  government  I  hope 
we  shall  be  able  by  degrees  to  introduce  sound  prin 
ciples  and  make  them  habitual."  The  leaders  of 
the  Federalists  he  considered  incorrigible,  but  their 


218  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

followers  might  be  won.  As  Henry  Adams  neatly 
says:  "Jefferson  intended  to  entice  the  flock  with 
one  hand  and  belabor  the  shepherds  with  the  other." 
When  Jefferson's  first  Congress  adjourned  on 
May  3;  1802,  though  there  was  a  Republican  ma 
jority  in  both  Houses,  the  sum  total  of  its  onslaught 
on  the  Federalist  measures  against  which  the  Re 
publicans  had  protested  for  a  decade  was  the  repeal 
of  the  Judiciary  Act,  the  Naturalization  Act,  and 
the  internal  taxes.  Economies  were  introduced  in 
army  and  navy  by  Jefferson's  able  secretary  of  the 
treasury,  Albert  Gallatin,  a  budget  system  calling 
for  specific  appropriations  was  introduced,  and  pro 
vision  was  made  for  setting  aside  enough  of  the 
annual  income  as  a  sinking  fund  to  extinguish  the 
debt  by  the  year  1817.  But  no  steps  were  taken  to 
modify  the  structure  of  government  or  to  guard 
against  those  centralizing  tendencies  which  the  Re 
publicans  professed  to  detest.  The  Alien  and  Sedi 
tion  Acts  expired  by  limitation  in  1801,  but  the 
Enemies  Alien  Act  remained,  and  still  remains,  on 
our  statute-books.  The  central  doctrine  of  Jeffer 
son's  political  creed  was  that  the  "  general  Govern 
ment"  must  not  be  the  final  judge  of  its~C)wri  pow 
ers.  Such  a  government  he  had  lately  called  a 
" despotism."  Yet  his  Republican  Congress  took 
no  steps  toward  initiating  an  amendment  to  the 
Constitution  by  which  the  justices  of  the  supreme 
court  should  have  a  limited  or  elective  term  or 


JEFFERSON  THE  EXPANSIONIST    219 

should  be  removable  on  petition  by  Congress.  Jef 
ferson  spoke  bitterly  of  the  Federalists  "retiring 
into  the  Judiciary  as  a  stronghold  "  from  which  they 
might  batter  down  all  the  works  of  republicanism; 
yet  he  left  the  stronghold  unattacked.  Where  was 
the  spirit  of  the  Kentucky  Resolutions ! 

Uncompromising  Republicans  of  the  South,  like 
John  Randolph,  John  Taylor,  Macon,  and  Giles, 
attributed  Jefferson's  acquiescence  in  the  status  quo 
to  the  influence  of  Secretary  Madison's  still  unre- 
formed  Federalism,  while  the  Federalists  rejoiced  at 
the  signs  of  approaching  disaffection  in  the  Republi 
can  ranks.  It  is  hard  to  know  just  what  the  mo 
tives  for  Jefferson's  " inconsistency"  were,  for  the 
story  that  he  promised  the  Federalists  of  the  House 
not  to  interfere  with  the  financial  institutions  of 
their  party,  in  order  to  secure  his  election  over  Burr, 
he  categorically  denied.  The  most  charitable  view 
of  the  matter  is  that  Jefferson  was  so  convinced  of 
the  change  of  heart  of  all  but  a  negligible  remnant 
of  Federalists  that  he  thought  the  Constitution  was 
in  no  further  danger  of  being  "perverted  into  mon 
archy."  After  all,  it  was  not  the  instrument  that 
mattered  so  much  as  the  character  of  the  men  in 
whose  hands  the  instrument  was.  The  least  chari 
table  view  of  Jefferson's  behavior  is  that  it  was  of  a 
piece  with  the  "ineradicable  duplicity"  of  mind 
which  made  him  say  one  thing  to  the  public  to 
establish  his  popularity,  and  work  another  course 


220  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

in  private  to  preserve  his  domination.  At  any  rate, 
the  majority  of  Jefferson's  biographers  have  adopted 
the  shrewd  and  pitiless  judgment  of  his  quondam 
colleague,  Hamilton,  written  to  persuade  Bayard  to 
cast  the  vote  of  Delaware  for  Jefferson  instead  of 
Burr:  "Nor  is  it  true  that  Jefferson  is  zealot  enough 
to  do  anything  in  pursuance  of  his  principles  which 
will  contravene  his  popularity  or  his  interest  .  .  . 
and  the  probable  result  of  such  a  temper  is  the 
preservation  of  systems,  though  originally  opposed, 
which,  once  being  established,  could  not  be  over 
turned  without  danger  to  the  person  who  did  it. 
To  my  mind,  a  true  estimate  of  Mr.  Jefferson's 
character  warrants  the  expectation  of  a  temporizing 
rather  than  a  violent  system." 

But  apart  from  nice  calculations  of  political  phi 
losophy  or  personal  popularity,  practical  questions 
arose  early  in  Jefferson's  administration  which  made 
it  imperative  for  him  to  preserve  the  "general  Gov 
ernment  in  its  whole  constitutional  vigor."  We 
have  seen  in  a  former  chapter  what  efforts  Jefferson 
made,  while  minister  at  Paris,  to  curb  the  pirates 
of  the  Barbary  Coast.  He  failed  to  enlist  the  sup 
port  of  the  maritime  Powers  of  Europe,  and,  worse 
than  that,  our  own  government  consented  to  pay 
ransom  money  and  tribute  all  through  the  adminis 
trations  of  Washington  and  Adams.  Early  in  Jef 
ferson's  term  the  crisis  came  in  the  Mediterranean. 
The  Dey  of  Algiers  compelled  Captain  Bainbridge, 


JEFFERSON  THE  EXPANSIONIST    221 

who  had  just  brought  him  tribute  money  from 
America,  to  raise  the  Algerian  standard  to  the  mast 
head  of  the  American  ship  and  go  on  an  errand  for 
him  to  the  Sultan  of  Constantinople.  A  few  months 
after  this  humiliating  event,  the  Bashaw  of  Tripoli 
demanded  an  increase  of  the  meagre  tribute  of 
eighty-three  thousand  dollars,  which  he  was  receiv 
ing  from  America,  and  on  being  refused,  declared 
war  on  the  United  States,  more  barbarico,  by  chop 
ping  down  the  flagpole  in  front  of  the  American 
consulate. 

Jefferson  and  Gallatin  both  deplored  the  necessity 
of  war:  the  former  because  it  disturbed  his  dream 
of  a  new  and  peaceful  empire  on  this  side  of  the 
Atlantic,  the  latter  because  it  interfered  with  his 
programme  of  economics  for  the  reduction  of  the 
national  debt.  But  theoretical  and  practical  ob 
jections  both  had  to  yield  to  the  exigencies  of  the 
situation.  Instead  of  laying  up  our  few  war-ships 
in  the  eastern  branch  of  the  Potomac,  where  they 
could  be  taken  care  of  by  "a  single  set  of  plunder 
ers,  "  and  roofing  them  over  to  protect  them  from 
the  sun  and  rain,  Jefferson  had  to  despatch  several 
expeditions  under  Dale,  Morris,  Preble,  and  Rodgers, 
to  the  Mediterranean.  The  work  of  chastising  the 
Barbary  pirates  lasted  through  the  four  years  of  his 
first  administration,  but  when  it  was  done  the 
Mediterranean  was  as  safe  for  commerce  as  the 
English  Channel.  The  brilliant  exploits  of  Decatur, 


222  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

Preble,  and  Somers  aroused  the  admiration  of 
Europe  and  wrote  a  second  chapter  in  the  history 
of  our  navy,  not  less  glorious  than  the  one  opened 
by  John  Manley  and  John  Paul  Jones.  But  they 
did  not  convert  Jefferson  and  his  secretary  to  a 
strong  naval  policy.  The  President  advocated  in 
stead  of  war  frigates  a  number  of  small  gunboats  for 
coast  defense,  which  could  be  drawn  up  on  land  like 
a  fisherman's  dory,  while  the  Treasury  Department 
emphasized  the  temporary  nature  of  the  increased 
tariff  duties  necessitated  by  the  war  by  setting  them 
apart  as  a  special  "Mediterranean  fund."  Jeffer 
son's  amphibious  navy  caused  much  contemptuous 
merriment  to  his  opponents,  and  his  policy  of  "un- 
preparedness "  has  been  held  directly  responsible  by 
most  of  our  historians  for  the  humiliations  of  his 
second  term,  which  culminated  in  the  War  of  1812 
with  Great  Britain. 

Determined  as  Jefferson  was,  however,  to  keep  us 
free  from  imperialistic  ambitions  abroad,  he  was  an 
ardent  apostle  of  a  greater  America  at  home.  For 
almost  a  score  of  years  before  he  became  President 
we  can  trace  in  his  writings  these  twin  ideas  of  a 
sundered  America  and  a  vast  America.  He  was  an 
advocate  of  the  principle  which  found  its  classic 
expression  near  the  close  of  his  long  life  in  the  Mon 
roe  Doctrine.  Even  before  Washington  had  fore 
shadowed  that  doctrine  in  his  Farewell  Address  of 
1796,  we  find  Jefferson  writing  from  Paris  (1787) 


JEFFERSON  THE  EXPANSIONIST    223 

recommending  peaceful  commercial  relations  with 
European  Powers,  without  "entangling  alliances." 
This  was  the  text  of  his  policy  as  secretary  of  state 
in  Washington's  first  administration.  So,  too,  in 
the  Paris  days,  we  find  him  encouraging  the  Ameri 
can  traveller,  Ledyard,  to  cross  Siberia  and  return 
to  his  New  England  home  by  way  of  the  great  un 
explored  West  of  our  continent.  In  the  same  year 
that  Captain  Grey  entered  the  Columbia  River 
(1792),  Jefferson  urged  the  American  Philosophical 
Society  to  raise  funds  by  subscription  for  the  explo 
ration  of  the  trans-Mississippi  country  (which  be 
longed  to  Spain).  The  English  settlements  on  the 
Atlantic  coast  were  the  "nest"  from  which  the 
whole  American  continent  was  to  be  populated. 
He  already  saw  in  imagination  a  people  of  one 
hundred  millions  here — the  United  States  of  the 
early  twentieth  century. 

Soon  after  Jefferson's  election  to  the  presidency 
the  opportunity  came  for  him  to  render  the  greatest 
service  of  his  administration  and  one  of  the  greatest 
services  of  the  nineteenth  century  to  the  American 
people.  The  reader  will  recall  how  the  Citizen  Con 
sul  Bonaparte,  fresh  from  his  triumph  over  the  Ai*3- 
trians  at  Marengo,  signed  the  convention  restoring 
peace  between  the  French  Republic  and  the  United 
States,  September  30,  1800.  The  very  next  day  he 
concluded  the  treaty  of  San  Ildefonso  with  Spain, 
by  which  he  gained  the  retrocession  of  the  vast  ter- 


224  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

ritory  of  Louisiana,  which  Louis  XV  had  handed 
over  to  his  ally,  Spain,  at  the  close  of  the  long  strug 
gle  between  France  and  England  for  the  possession 
of  the  St.  Lawrence  and  Mississippi  valleys  (1762). 
"The  treaty  of  October  1,"  says  Henry  Adams,  "  un 
did  the  treaty  of  September  30."  As  soon  as  it  was 
known  in  Washington  that  Napoleon  had  acquired 
Louisiana,  Jefferson  began  to  take  alarm.  "Spain 
is  ceding  Louisiana  to  France,"  he  wrote  to  Rufus 
King  in  London,  May  14,  1801,  "an  inauspicious 
circumstance  for  us."  And  to  Monroe,  a  few  days 
later,  he  wrote:  "There  is  considerable  reason  to 
apprehend  that  Spain  cedes  Louisiana  and  the 
Floridas  to  France.  It  is  a  policy  very  unwise  in 
both,  and  very  ominous  to  us."  Napoleon's  cher 
ished  plan  of  rebuilding  a  French  colonial  empire  in 
America  developed  apace  in  the  brief  interval  of 
peace  which  the  years  1801  and  1802  brought 
to  France.  He  sent  his  brother-in-law,  General 
Leclerc,  with  ten  thousand  troops  to  reduce  the 
island  of  Santo  Domingo  as  a  preliminary  to  occu 
pying  New  Orleans.  His  plan  was  to  oust  the 
Americans  from  their  lucrative  trade  with  the  An 
tilles,  and  joining  the  islands  of  the  Caribbean  Sea 
with  the  shores  of  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  and  the  Mis 
sissippi  Valley,  to  restore  the  colonial  empire  which 
France  had  lost  a  generation  before. 

Leclerc  and  twice  ten  thousand  men  were  destined 
to  succumb  to  the  desperate  resistance  of  the  negro 


JEFFERSON  THE  EXPANSIONIST    225 

chieftain,  Toussaint  Louverture,  and  to  the  deadly 
ravages  of  the  yellow  fever  in  Santo  Domingo,  before 
a  year  had  passed.  But  Jefferson  could  not  foresee 
how  fate  would  work  to  frustrate  Napoleon's  ambi 
tions.  In  great  alarm  he  wrote,  on  April  18,  1802, 
to  Robert  R.  Livingston,  our  minister  in  Paris,  that 
the  cession  of  Louisiana  to  France  completely  re 
versed  all  the  political  relations  of  the  United  States, 
and  "would  form  a  new  epoch  in  our  political 
course."  "There  is  on  the  globe,"  he  said,  "one 
single  spot  the  possessor  of  which  is  our  natural  and 
habitual  enemy.  It  is  New  Orleans,  through  which 
the  produce  of  three-eighths  of  our  territory  must 
pass  to  market.  France,  placing  herself  in  that 
door  assumes  to  us  the  attitude  of  defiance.  Spain 
might  have  retained  it  quietly  for  years.  Her  pacific 
dispositions,  her  feeble  state,  would  induce  her  to 
increase  our  facilities  there  so  that  her  possession  of 
the  place  would  be  hardly  felt  by  us,  and  it  would 
not  perhaps  be  very  long  before  some  circumstance 
might  arise  which  might  make  the  cession  of  it  to 
us  the  price  of  something  of  more  worth  to  her. 
Not  so  can  it  ever  be  in  the  hands  of  France.  The 
impetuosity  of  her  temper,  the  energy  and  restless 
ness  of  her  character  .  .  .  make  it  impossible  that 
France  and  the  United  States  can  continue  long 
friends  when  they  meet  in  so  irritable  a  position. 
The  day  France  takes  possession  of  New  Orleans 
fixes  the  sentence  which  is  to  restrain  her  forever 


226  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

within  her  low-water  mark.  It  seals  the  union  of 
two  nations  which  in  conjunction  can  maintain  ex 
clusive  possession  of  the  ocean.  From  that  moment 
we  must  marry  ourselves  to  the  British  fleet  and 
nation."  This  from  Thomas  Jefferson,  the  lifelong 
friend  of  France  and  the  denouncer  of  the  "execra 
ble"  Jay  Treaty  with  England ! 

In  October,  1802,  the  Spanish  authorities  at  New 
Orleans  (whether  at  the  instigation  or  for  the  em 
barrassment  of  Napoleon,  who  had  not  yet  taken 
possession  of  Louisiana)  closed  »the  mouth  of  the 
Mississippi  to  American  vessels  t>y"  suspending  the 
right  of  deposit  at  New  Orleans  which  had  been 
granted  by  the  Pinckney  Trea^~oTT795".  "The  de 
cree  was  received  with  consternation  by  "the  pres 
tigious  and  restless  population"  of  our  West,  who 
sent  their  produce  down  the  great  river.  "The 
Mississippi  is  everything  to  them,"  wrote  Madison 
to  our  minister  in  Spain;  "it  is  the  Hudson,  the 
Delaware,  the  Potomac,  and  all  the  navigable  rivers 
of  the  Atlantic  States,  formed  into  one."  During 
the  year  1802  the  farmers  of  Kentucky  and  the  Mis 
sissippi  Territory  alone  had  sent  one  million  six 
hundred  thousand  dollars'  worth  of  produce  through 
that  channel.  The  reports  of  the  Spanish  custom 
house  showed  transhipments  of  over  a  thousand 
hogsheads  of  tobacco  and  a  hundred  thousand  bar 
rels  of  flour,  with  great  quantities  of  bacon,  pork, 
lead,  cordage,  and  apples.  Of  the  two  hundred  and 


JEFFERSON  THE  EXPANSIONIST    227 

sixty-five  vessels  that  sailed  from  the  Mississippi 
the  same  year,  one  hundred  and  fifty-eight  were 
American,  as  compared  with  one  hundred  and  four 
Spanish  and  only  three  French.  The  Americans 
were  rapidly  gaining  a  monopoly  of  the  trade  of  New 
Orleans.  Petitions  began  to  pour  into  Congress 
from  the  Western  settlements  for  the  defense  of  their 
commerce.  They  were  anxious  to  have  the  United 
States  troops  at  Natchez  march  on  New  Orleans 
forthwith. 

Never  before  was  Jefferson  confronted  with  so 
difficult  and  delicate  a  situation,  and  never,  before 
or  after,  did  he  display  to  better  advantage  his  re 
sources  of  patient  and  tactful  diplomacy.  He 
calmed  Congress  by  a 'confident  message  which  con 
tained  no  mention  of  the  suspended  right  of  deposit, 
but  dwelt  on  the  return  of  peace  in  Europe  and  the 
growing  prosperity  of  our  country.  He  only  men 
tioned  the  cession  of  Louisiana  to  France  as  a  trans 
action  which,  if  carried  into  effect,  would  make  a 
change  in  the  aspect  of  our  foreign  relations.  He 
encouraged  the  exasperated  people  of  the  West  to 
trust  to  the  protection  of  the  party  which  had  con 
sistently  supported  their  interests  rather  than  fly 
to  the  new  and  simulated  friendship  of  the  Federal 
ists.  He  secured  the  appointment  of  James  Monroe 
as  a  special  envoy  to  France  to  co-operate  with  our 
minister,  Robert  R.  Livingston,  and  the  appropria 
tion  of  two  million  dollars  "to  enable  the  Executive 


228  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

to  commence  with  more  effect  a  negotiation  with 
the  French  and  Spanish  governments  relative  to 
the  purchase  from  them  of  the  Island  of  New  Or 
leans  and  the  provinces  of  East  and  West  Florida. " 

In  spite  of  his  easy  tone  to  Congress,  however, 
Jefferson  realized  to  the  full  the  seriousness  of  the 
situation^ "It  is  a  crisis/ '  he  wrote  to  his  old 
friend,  Dupont  de  Nemours,  "the  most  important 
the  United  States  have  met  since  their  independence 
and  which  is  to  decide  their  future  character  and 
career";  and  to  Livingston,  in  France,  he  wrote: 
"The  future  destinies  of  our  country  hang  on  the 
event  of  this  negotiation."  Livingston's  instruc 
tions  in  the  note  of  April  18,  1802,  had  declared  that 
the  cession  of  New  Orleans  and  the  Floridas  to  us 
by  France  "would  certainly  in  a  great  degree  remove 
the  causes  of  jarring  and  irritation  between  us,"  if 
France  were  determined  to  keep  Louisiana.  But 
there  is  proof  that  Jefferson  would  have  been  con 
tent  for  the  moment  to  consider  the  restoration  of 
the  right  of  deposit  and  the  free  navigation  of  the 
river  as  a  basis  for  further  peaceful  negotiation. 
Monroe's  instructions  were  left  vague  enough  to 
admit  of  almost  any  deal  with  Napoleon  and  Tal 
leyrand.  They  consisted  of  hardly  more  than  ex 
aggerated  expressions  of  confidence  in  Monroe's 
discretion. 

It  was  not,  however,  the  faithful  labors  of  Liv 
ingston  or  even  the  far-seeing  ambitions  of  Jefferson 


JEFFERSON  THE  EXPANSIONIST    229 

that  were  the  primary  cause  of  our  acquisition  of 
that  splendid  domain  which  stretches  from  the  Mis 
sissippi  to  the  Rockies  and  from  Canada  to  the 
Gulf.  Livingston's  offers  had  been  coldly  received 
by  Talleyrand,  and  he  wrote  home  to  Madison  just 
as  Monroe  was  starting  for  Paris:  "With  respect  to 
the  negotiations  for  Louisiana,  I  think  nothing  will 
be  effected  here."  Jefferson  himself  confessed  in  a 
letter  to  John  Bacon  (written  curiously  enough  on 
the  very  day  the  treaty  of  cession  was  dated  in 
Paris,  April  30,  1803)  that  he  was  "not  sanguine  in 
obtaining  a  cession  of  New  Orleans  for  money,"  but 
was  "confident  in  the  policy  of  putting  off  the  day 
of  contention  for  it"  till  we  should  be  "stronger  in 
ourselves  and  stronger  in  allies";  especially  till  we 
should  have  "planted  such  a  population  on  the  Mis 
sissippi"  as  would  be  able  to  defend  their  rights. 
He  did  not  expect  Napoleon  to  yield,  but  his  hope 
was  to  "palliate  and  endure"  until  war  between 
France  and  England,  with  our  threat  to  join  the  lat 
ter,  gave  him  the  chance  to  bring  to  bear  on  the 
First  Consul  the  only  kind  of  argument  which  he 
heeded. 

But  Napoleon  did  not  wait.  He  never  let  the 
initiative  in  an  inevitable  act  come  from  another. 
The  ill-kept  peace  of  Amiens  was  wearing  thin. 
England  refused  to  abandon  Malta  in  the  Mediter 
ranean,  and  Napoleon  continued  his  aggressions  on 
the  Republics  along  the  French  borders.  Each 


230  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

made  the  other's  acts  a  cause  of  war,  and  both  began 
preparations  for  war.  On  the  very  day  after  Liv 
ingston  wrote  home  his  pessimistic  prospects  for  the 
purchase  of  any  of  Louisiana,  Napoleon  practically 
declared  war  on  England  by  publicly  insulting  Lord 
Whitworth  at  an  audience  of  ambassadors  at  the 
Tuileries:  "  You  are  determined  to  make  war  against 
us.  You  drive  me  to  it.  I  shall  be  the  last  to 
sheathe  the  sword."  Devoted  as  Napoleon  was  to 
his  colonial  scheme,  not  even  his  colossal  brain 
could  manage  the  affairs  of  both  hemispheres.  He 
had  to  choose  between  Europe  and  America,  be 
tween  the  Continent  and  the  colonies — and  he  chose 
as  every  French  ruler  had  chosen  since  the  days  of 
Richelieu.  Santo  Domingo  had  cost  him  twenty- 
four  thousand  men.  Spain,  secretly  encouraged  by 
England,  had  persistently  refused  to  include  the 
gulf  shores  of  the  Floridas  in  the  cession  of  San 
Ildefonso.  Pichon,  the  French  agent  at  Washing 
ton,  was  writing  home  alarming  reports  of  the  "  re 
doubled  civilities"  of  President  Jefferson  for  the 
British  charge.  England's  renewal  of  the  war 
meant  a  rebuilding  of  the  European  coalition.  With 
characteristic  abruptness,  Napoleon  ordered  his 
finance  minister,  Barbe-Marbois,  to  offer  the  whole 
province  of  Louisiana  to  Livingston  for  fifty  mil 
lion  francs  (April  11,  1803).  Talleyrand,  to  whom 
Napoleon  had  also  disclosed  his  plan,  had  already 
surprised  Livingston  by  asking  him  how  much  the 


JEFFERSON  THE  EXPANSIONIST    231 

United  States  would  give  for  the  whole  of  Lou 
isiana. 

Livingston  and  Monroe  (who  arrived  in  Paris  the 
day  after  Talleyrand's  proposal)  had  authority  to 
negotiate  for  New  Orleans  and  the  Floridas  only, 
and  had  but  two  million  dollars,  or  one-fifth  the 
price  Napoleon  asked,  to  spend.  Marbois  at  first 
put  the  price  of  Louisiana  at  one  hundred  million 
francs,  instead  of  the  fifty  million  which  Napoleon 
had  suggested;  but  finally  came  down  to  sixty  mil 
lion  clear,  with  the  proviso  that  the  American  Gov 
ernment  would  assume  liability  for  the  claims  of 
its  citizens  for  damages  done  their  shipping.  These 
claims  amounted  to  some  twenty  million  francs. 
The  responsibility  put  on  the  envoys  was  great. 
Fifteen  million  dollars  was  a  sum  considerably  in 
excess  of  the  total  annual  revenue  of  the  United 
States,  and  the  French  title  to  Louisiana  was  not 
unimpeachable.1  Yet  Livingston  and  Monroe  did 
not  hesitate  to  accept  the  bargain.  On  May  2, 
1803,  they  signed  the  treaty  transferring  the  prov 
ince  to  the  United  States.  Well  might  Livingston 

1  (1)  Napoleon  had  not  taken  possession  of  Louisiana  when  he 
sold  it  to  us.  (2)  He  had  never  fulfilled  his  part  of  the  bargain  with 
Spain,  which  was  an  Italian  throne  for  the  King's  nephew.  (3)  He 
had  promised  Spain  never  to  transfer  Louisiana  to  a  foreign  Power. 
(4)  He  was  forbidden  by  the  French  Constitution  to  alienate  any 
of  the  territory  of  the  Republic.  "In  taking  Louisiana,"  says 
Professor  Edward  Channing,  "we  were  the  accomplices  of  the 
greatest  highwayman  of  modern  history,  and  the  goods  which  we 
received  were  those  which  he  compelled  his  unwilling  victims  to 
disgorge." 


232  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

exclaim  as  he  rose  and  shook  hands  with  Monroe 
and  Marbois:  "We  have  lived  long,  but  this  is  the 
noblest  work  of  our  whole  lives.  .  .  .  From  this 
day  the  United  States  take  their  place  among  the 
powers  of  the  first  rank.  The  instruments  which 
we  have  just  signed  .  .  .  prepare  ages  of  happiness 
for  innumerable  generations  of  human  creatures." 
The  price  paid  for  that  princely  domain  out  of  which 
fourteen  States  of  the  Union  have  been  carved  was 
fifteen  million  dollars.  A  little  over  a  century  later 
the  value  of  the  farm  property  alone  in  those  States 
was  sixteen  billion  dollars,  or  more  than  a  thousand 
times  the  price  of  the  purchase. 

It  was  a  very  embarrassed  rejoicing  with  which 
Jefferson  received  the  report  of  the  purchase  of  the 
whole  of  Louisiana.  This  advocate  of  strict  econ 
omy  had  spent  on  his  own  executive  authority  an 
amount  equal  to  almost  three-fourths  of  the  debt 
which  Hamilton  had  assumed  for  the  States,  with 
the  sanction  of  Congress.  This  champion  of  the 
letter  of  the  Constitution  had  exercised  the  power 
of  acquiring  foreign  territory  and  promising  foreign 
ers  admission  to  the  citizenship  of  the  United  States 
for  which  no  clause  could  be  found  among  the  "enu 
merated  powers."  This  opponent  of  the  extension 
of  the  "general  Government"  had  stretched  its 
power  far  beyond  any  point  the  Federalists  had 
reached,  and  laid  the  foundation,  in  the  creation  of 
an  immense  national  territory  in  the  West,  for  that 


JEFFERSON  THE  EXPANSIONIST    233 

definitive  triumph  of  the  nation  over  the  States 
which  his  "countrymen"  of  the  second  generation 
fought  so  desperately  to  avert. 

Jefferson  was  quick  to  recognize  the  irregularity 
of  his  act  and  cry,  "Peccavi!"  He  had  no  apology 
to  make  for  the  nature  of  the  bargain,  and  looked  to 
"this  duplication  of  area  for  extending  a  govern 
ment  so  free  and  economical  as  ours"  as  a  great 
achievement,  which  he  was  sure  the  nation  would 
not  disavow.  But  he  confessed  that  "the  Execu 
tive,  in  seizing  this  fugitive  occasion  which  so  much 
advances  the  good  of  their  country,  have  done  an 
act  beyond  the  Constitution."  He  compared  his 
deed  to  that  of  a  guardian  who  invests  his  ward's 
money  in  a  valuable  piece  of  property  and  trusts 
that  the  benefits  to  accrue  will  redeem  the  unau 
thorized  risk.  He  expected  Congress  "in  casting 
behind  them  metaphysical  subtleties  and  risking 
themselves  like  faithful  servants,"  to  ratify  the  act 
and  pay  for  Louisiana,  and  then  "throw  them 
selves  on  the  country  for  doing  for  them  unau7 
thorized  what  we  know  they  would  have  done  for 
themselves  had  they  been  in  a  situation  to  do  it." 
"Paternalism"  in  government,  which  Jefferson  had 
always  abhorred,  could  hardly  be  more  boldly 
stated ! 

Jefferson  drew  up  an  amendment  to  the  Constitu 
tion  to  regularize  the  purchase  of  Louisiana,  ex  post 
facto.  But  when  letters  came  from  Livingston  at 


234  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

Paris  warning  him  that  there  must  be  no  delay  in 
the  ratification  of  the  treaty  and  the  appropriation 
of  the  funds,  lest  Napoleon  should  change  his  mind, 
Jefferson  changed  his  tone.  He  wrote  to  some  friends 
to  whom  he  had  expressed  his  desire  for  a  constitu 
tional  amendment  that  the  less  said  about  the  "  con 
stitutional  difficulties"  respecting  Louisiana  the  bet 
ter,  and  that  whatever  was  "necessary  for  surmount 
ing  them  must  be  done  sub  silentio."  Accordingly, 
when  Congress  met  by  special  call  in  October  nothing 
was  said  of  the  irregularity  of  the  purchase.  The 
Senate  promptly  ratified  the  treaty  by  a  vote  of 
twenty-four  to  seven,  and  the  House  two  days  later 
voted  by  ninety  to  twenty-five  the  necessary  funds, 
by  the  authorization  of  eleven  million  two  hun 
dred  and  fifty  thousand  dollars  of  six-per-cent  stock. 
The  little  group  of  Federalists  made  a  desperate  re 
sistance.  They  attacked  the  treaty  as  unconstitu 
tional  on  the  ground  that  Congress  alone  could 
"regulate  trade"  and  "admit  new  States  to  this 
Union."  They  asked  whether  the  payment  of  so 
large  a  sum  of  the  public  money  to  a  belligerent 
nation  were  not  virtually  a  breach  of  neutrality. 
They  doubted  the  validity  of  Napoleon's  title  to 
Louisiana,  and  declared  that  we  had  simply  bought 
of  France  at  an  exorbitant  price  "the  authority  to 
make  war  on  Spain."  But  their  opposition  was 
vain.  They  could  muster  only  a  handful  of  votes. 
The  Louisiana  Treaty  was  as  popular  as  the  Jay 


JEFFERSON  THE  EXPANSIONIST    235 

Treaty  had  been  unpopular.  Public  opinion  car 
ried  the  administration  to  a  splendid  victory,  and 
"the  theory  of  strict  construction  was  abandoned 
in  the  house  of  its  friends." 

If  the  Constitution  was  strained  by  the  treaty 
acquiring  the  province  of  Louisiana,  the  Declaration 
of  Independence  was  outraged  in  the  provisions 
made  for  its  government.  Thomas  Jefferson,  the 
author  of  the  document  which  declares  that  gov 
ernments  "derive  their  just  powers  from  the  con 
sent  of  the  governed,"  was,  by  an  act  of  March, 
1804,  given  an  authority  over  the  Territory  of  Or 
leans  which  resembled  that  of  an  imperial  Roman 
governor  rather  than  a  constitutional  Republican 
magistrate.  He  simply  replaced  King  Charles  of 
Spain  as  ruler  of  the  province.  He  was  to  appoint 
the  governor  of  the  Territory,  the  council  to  make 
its  laws,  the  superior  judges  in  its  courts — in  short, 
the  whole  governmental  machinery,  executive,  legis 
lative,  judicial.  The  thirty  thousand  inhabitants 
of  Louisiana,  who  by  the  third  article  of  the  treaty 
had  been  promised  that  they  should  be  "incorpo 
rated  into  the  Union  of  the  United  States  and 
admitted  as  soon  as  possible  .  .  .  into  all  the 
rights,  advantages,  and  immunities  of  citizens  of  the 
United  States,"  were  relegated  to  a  state  of  colonial 
dependence  as  absolute  as  that  of  our  Filipinos  in 
1901.  They  protested  in  a  memorial  drawn  up  by 
Edward  Livingston,  the  younger  brother  of  the 


236  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

minister  who  had  negotiated  the  purchase,  begging 
to  know  whether  political  principles  which  were 
valid  on  the  Atlantic  coast  lost  their  force  when 
transferred  to  the  banks  of  the  Mississippi,  and 
citing  the  Jeffersonian  doctrines  of  1775  as  a  rebuke 
to  the  Jeffersonian  policies  of  1804.  "Taxation 
without  representation,  an  obligation  to  obey  laws 
without  any  voice  in  their  foundation,  the  undue 
influence  of  the  executive  upon  legislative  proceed 
ings,  and  a  dependent  judiciary,  formed,  we  believe, 
very  prominent  articles  in  the  list  of  grievances  com 
plained  of  by  the  United  States  at  the  commence 
ment  of  their  glorious  contest  for  freedom.  Were 
the  patriots  who  composed  your  councils  mistaken 
in  their  political  principles?"  The  act  of  1804  was 
somewhat  modified  in  response  to  this  strong  and 
able  remonstrance;  but  still  the  President  was  left 
with  unprecedented  powers  over  the  new  domain. 

Louisiana  was  handed  over  to  the  French  by  the 
Spanish  governor  on  November  30, 1803,  and  twenty 
days  later  was  transferred  from  France  to  the  United 
States.  Just  what  its  boundaries  were  was  uncer 
tain  then  and  has  continued  to  be  a  subject  of  lively 
controversy  among  historians  ever  since.  Did  it  in 
clude  Texas  on  the  west,  or  any  part  of  the  Flor- 
idas  on  the  east  ?  A  map  in  the  French  foreign  of 
fice  (drawn  by  Marbois  ?)  includes  both  these  regions 
in  the  Louisiana  which  France  secured  from  Spain  in 
the  treaty  of  1800,  and  General  Victor's  instructions 


JEFFERSON  THE  EXPANSIONIST    237 

to  take  possession  of  the  province  distinctly  state 
the  Rio  Bravo  (Rio  Grande)  as  the  western  bound 
ary.  Jefferson,  Madison,  and  Monroe,  who  were 
all  intimately  concerned  in  the  purchase  negotia 
tions,  believed  that  Texas  was  included.  But  we  had 
no  trans-Mississippi  settlements  as  yet,  and  the  claim 
on  Texas  was  abandoned  in  the  Spanish  treaty  of 
1819,  only  to  be  revived  again  a  quarter  of  a  cen 
tury  later,  in  Folk's  campaign  cry  for  the  "re-annex 
ation  of  Texas."  With  the  Floridas  the  case  was 
different^.  Large  rivers  from  our  Territory  of  Mis 
sissippi  emptied  along  the  Florida  Gulf  coast,  and 
the  control  of  this  coast  was  necessary  both  for  the 
outlet  of  our  commerce  and  for  the  protection  of  our 
territory  against  Indian  raids. 

Into  the  complications  of  the  Florida  case  we  can 
not  enter  here.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  neither  Napo 
leon  nor  Monroe  believed  that  Florida  was  included 
in  the  Louisiana  Purchase.  The  former  instructed 
his  agent,  Berthier,  in  August,  1800,  to  get  Spain 
"to  join  to  this  cession  (Louisiana)  that  of  the  two 
Floridas,  Eastern  and  Western,"  and  as  late  as  the 
autumn  of  1802  was  still  vainly  urging  King  Charles 
to  part  with  the  Floridas.  Monroe  was  on  the  point 
of  setting  out  for  Madrid,  immediately  after  the 
conclusion  of  the  treaty  at  Paris,  to  endeavor  to 
buy  the  Floridas  from  Spain  "for  another  million 
or  two,"  when  he  was  deterred  by  the  French  min 
isters,  who  had  good  reason  for  not  advertising  in 


238  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

Madrid  their  sale  of  Louisiana  to  the  United  States. 
These  facts  would  seem  to  be  proof  enough  that  we 
did  not  purchase  the  Floridas  in  1803.  Yet  Jeffer 
son  studied  up  the  old  boundaries  of  French,  Span 
ish,  and  English  claims  in  Florida  during  his  sum 
mer  rest  at  Monticello,  and  came  to  the  (highly  de 
sirable)  conclusion  that  we  had  purchased  West 
Florida  up  to  the  Perdido  River — the  division  be 
tween  French  and  Spanish  spheres  of  influence  on 
the  Gulf  shore  at  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  cen 
tury.  "I  am  satisfied  our  right  to  the  Perdido  is 
substantial,"  he  wrote  to  Secretary  Madison  on 
August  25,  "and  can  be  opposed  by  a  quibble  .  .  . 
only." 

Encouraged  by  the  administration  in  this  further 
adventure  in  expansion,  Congress  in  February,  1804, 
authorized  the  President  to  erect  the  "shores, 
waters,  and  inlets  of  the  bay  and  river  of  Mobile" 
into  a  customs  district;  and  on  May  20  Jefferson,  in 
spite  of  spirited  protest  from  the  Spanish  minister 
at  Washington,  carried  out  the  act  by  proclama 
tion.  The  rest  of  the  story  of  Florida  is  an  illustra 
tion  of  La  Fontaine's  fable  of  the  wolf  and  the  lamb. 
Spain  sank  into  a  state  of  vassalage  to  France.  The 
mighty  Napoleon  deposed  her  sovereign  and  set  his 
own  brother  on  the  throne  of  Madrid.  Her  colonies 
in  America  revolted  one  by  one  and  established  their 
independence.  Step  by  step  we  absorbed  the  val 
uable  Gulf  shore  of  Florida  under  Jefferson's  sue- 


JEFFERSON  THE  EXPANSIONIST    239 

cessors,  Madison  and  Monroe.  In  1810  Madison 
proclaimed  the  annexation  of  West  Florida;  in  1812 
that  part  of  it  west  of  the  Pearl  River  was  added  to 
the  newly  created  State  of  Louisiana;  in  1813  the 
country  was  occupied  as  far  as  the  Perdido;  in  1818 
General  Jackson  swept  across  East  Florida  to  chas 
tise  the  Seminole  Indians;  and  finally,  in  1819,  a 
treaty  was  negotiated  by  which  Spain  withdrew 
from  the  Floridas  altogether.  Thomas  Jefferson,  in 
that  piece  of  historical  research  at  Monticello  in  the 
summer  of  1803,  was  preparing  the  ground  for  Jack 
son's  conquest.  It  was  Jefferson's  claim  that  Madi 
son  and  Monroe  extended  and  consummated. 

Nor  was  Jefferson's  vision  of  expansion  bounded 
by  the  Rockies  and  the  Gulf.  We  have  already 
noticed  his  interest  in  the  exploration  of  the  Far 
West  which  antedated  even  the  treaty  of  our  inde 
pendence.  When  Jefferson  became  President  he 
took  advantage  of  his  position  to  push  the  matter. 
He  sent  a  message  to  Congress  on  January  18,  1803 
(just  a  week  after  the  appointment  of  Monroe  as 
special  envoy  to  Paris),  asking  for  an  appropriation 
of  twenty-five  hundred  dollars  to  send  "an  intelli 
gent  officer  with  10  or  12  chosen  men  fit  for  the 
enterprise/'  to  explore  "even  to  the  Western  Ocean," 
to  get  acquainted  with  the  various  Indian  tribes, 
secure  admission  among  them  for  our  traders,  and 
bring  back  geographical,  zoological,  and  botanical 
knowledge  of  the  land.  With  a  quite  naive  disre- 


240  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

gard  of  the  ethics  of  sending  an  armed  force  through 
the  territory  of  a  friendly  power,  he  says  that  the 
nation  [Spain]  claiming  the  region  would  be  inclined 
to  regard  the  expedition  as  aa  literary  pursuit,"  and 
would  not  be  jealous — "even  if  the  expiring  state  of 
its  interests  there  did  not  render  it  a  matter  of  in 
difference."  The  "intelligent  officer"  whom  Jef 
ferson  had  in  mind  to  lead  the  expedition  was  his 
private  secretary,  Meriwether  Lewis,  whom  he  had 
tried  to  start  on  a  similar  expedition  with  the 
French  explorer,  Michaux,  eleven  years  before. 
With  Lewis  he  joined  William  Clark,  a  younger 
brother  of  George  Rogers  Clark,  the  hero  of  Vin- 
cennes.  After  a  year  of  serious  training,  the  expe 
dition  consisting  of  forty-five  persons  left  camp  on 
the  Du  Bois  River,  a  little  above  St.  Louis,  for  the 
long  journey  to  the  "Western  Ocean."  They  went 
up  the  Missouri  in  three  boats,  rowing  and  poling 
through  the  muddy  stream,  while  their  hunting 
horse  followed  along  the  bank. 

No  story  in  our  history  is  more  fascinating  than 
the  original  records  of  the  Lewis  and  Clark  expedi 
tion,  gathered  with  great  diligence  and  edited  in 
most  attractive  form  by  the  late  Professor  R.  G. 
Thwaites,  unless  it  be  Francis  Parkman's  account 
of  his  repetition  of  the  journey  in  "The  Oregon 
Trail."  The  instructions  given  to  Lewis  by  Jeffer 
son  covered  every  possible  topic  of  inquiry  concern 
ing  the  lands  and  tribes  through  which  the  explor- 


JEFFERSON  THE  EXPANSIONIST    241 

ers  should  pass;  and  the  fidelity  with  which  the 
chief  and  the  members  of  the  party  kept  their  notes 
enables  us  to  follow  them  day  by  day,  almost  hour 
by  hour,  up  the  Missouri  to  its  source,  across  the 
"great  divide"  to  the  headwaters  of  the  Columbia 
system,  and  down  to  what  Clark  in  his  homely, 
direct,  ungrammatical  style  calls  "the  great  Pacific 
Otean  which  we  have  been  so  long  anxious  to  See 
and  the  roreing  noise  made  by  waves  braking  on 
the  rocky  Shores  (as  I  suppose)  may  be  heard  dis- 
tictly."  The  party  spent  its  second  winter  (1805-6) 
on  the  Pacific  coast  at  the  mouth  of  the  Columbia, 
and,  starting  on  the  return  trip  in  March,  were  back 
in  St.  Louis  before  the  end  of  September,  1806.  The 
Lewis  and  Clark  Expedition  was  the  first  recorded 
passage  of  white  men  across  the  northern  part  of 
what  is  now  the  United  States.  It  forms  an  im 
portant  chapter  in  the  history  of  our  expansion,  for 
not  only  did  it  lay  a  foundation  for  the  scientific 
acquaintance  with  our  newly  acquired  territory  of 
Louisiana,  but  it  proved  the  best  of  our  claims  to 
the  great  Oregon  region  beyond.  So  the  other  half 
of  the  slogan  of  Polk's  campaign  in  1844,  the  "re- 
occupation  of  Oregon"  also  goes  back  to  the  expan 
sionist  activities  of  Thomas  Jefferson.1 

1  There  is  no  evidence  that  Jefferson  gave  the  directions  to  Gen 
eral  Wilkinson  for  sending  Zebulon  Pike  to  find  the  headwaters  of  the 
Mississippi  in  1805  or  to  explore  the  region  south  of  the  Arkansas 
and  the  Missouri  in  1806,  though,  as  Channing  remarks  of  the  later 
mission,  "it  seems  unlikely  that  Wilkinson  would  have  sent  a  de- 


242  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

The  presidential  election  of  1804  found  Jefferson 
at  the  full  tide  of  his  success  and  popularity.  His 
'foreign  policy  had  been  approved  by  large  majorities 
in  both  Houses  of  Congress.  The  reports  of  the  ex 
ploits  of  our  gallant  sailors  in  the  Mediterranean 
filled  American  hearts  with  pride.  Our  revenues 
were  so  swelled  by  duties  on  our  imports  that  we 
were  able  to  pay  the  current  expenses  of  the  gov 
ernment,  civil  and  military,  the  interest  on  the 
Louisiana  stock,  three  million,  six  hundred  thou 
sand  dollars  on  the  principal  of  the  debt,  and  still 
have  a  balance  in  the  treasury,  September  30,  1804, 
of  nearly  five  million  dollars,  without  resorting  to 
increased  taxation.  Harmony  reigned  in  Congress 
and  the  cabinet. 

In  the  country  at  large  Republicanism  had  been 
growing  steadily.  With  the  sole  exception  of 
Matthew  Lyon,  of  Vermont,  the  electors  of  the 
New  England  States  had  cast  their  votes  solidly 
against  Jefferson  in  the  great  contest  of  1801.  Four 
years  later  Connecticut  alone  remained  faithful  to 
the  waning  Federalist  cause.  Factious  opposition 
to  the  Louisiana  Purchase,  jingo  patriotism  to  stir 
up  war  in  the  Western  settlements,  sarcastic  toasts 
at  banquets  to  the  "limitation  of  Virginia's  domi 
nation  by  the  Constitution — or  by  the  Delaware," 


tachment  of  his  small  army  into  a  region  which  was  in  dispute  be 
tween  the  United  States  and  Spain  without  the  authorization  of 
those  who  were  responsible." 


JEFFERSON  THE  EXPANSIONIST    243 

desperate  plans  to  join  New  York,  New  Jersey,  and 
Delaware  with  New  England  in  a  secessionist  move 
ment,  through  appeals  to  the  ambition  of  the  dis 
contented  Burr,  all  resulted  in  nothing  except  the 
defeat  of  Burr  for  the  governorship  of  New  York 
and  his  murderous  revenge  on  Alexander  Hamilton 
on  the  duelling-ground  at  Weehawken  Heights. 

Jefferson  declared  that  it  was  his  "decided  pur 
pose,"  when  he  entered  the  presidency,  to  retire  at 
the  end  of  one  term  to  a  life  of  tranquillity.  But 
early  in  1804  he  wrote  to  Governor  McKean,  of 
Pennsylvania:  "The  abominable  slanders  of  my 
political  enemies  have  obliged  me  to  call  for  [a] 
verdict  from  my  country  in  the  only  way  it  can  be 
obtained."  He  therefore  allowed  himself  to  be 
nominated  by  a  Congressional  caucus,  with  George 
Clinton,  of  New  York,  for  his  running  mate.  The 
Federalists,  without  the  formality  of  a  nomination, 
agreed  to  vote  for  C.  C.  Pinckney,  of  South  Caro 
lina,  and  Rufus  King,  of  New  York.  The  Twelfth 
Amendment  was  ratified  and  proclaimed  before  the 
election,  providing  for  the  specific  designation  of 
President  and  Vice-President  on  the  ballots,  and 
thus  obviating  either  of  the  electoral  anomalies  of 
1797  and  1801.  Seventeen  States  voted,  Ohio  hav 
ing  been  admitted  into  the  Union  in  1802.  The  re 
sult  of  the  contest  was  never  in  doubt,  but  the  com 
pleteness  of  Jefferson's  victory  was  a  surprise.  His 
Federalist  opponent  carried  only  the  two  States  of 


244  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

Connecticut  and  Delaware,  which,  with  a  little  help 
from  Maryland,  gave  them  fourteen  votes  in  the 
electoral  college  to  one  hundred  and  sixty-two  for 
Jefferson  and  Clinton.  No  other  President,  with 
the  exception  of  Washington,  has  ever  received  so 
complete  an  indorsement  of  his  administration  or 
so  universal  an  expression  of  the  confidence  of  the 
American  people. 

Jefferson  believed  that  he  had  " brought  over" 
the  great  body  of  Federalists  to  Republicanism;  but 
he  had  in  reality  gone  far  more  than  half-way  to 
meet  them.  He  had  more  than  redeemed  the 
pledge  of  his  inaugural  address  to  "preserve  the 
general  Government  in  its  whole  constitutional 
vigor."  He  had  endowed  it  with  extra-constitu 
tional  vigor.  The  Jefferson  of  the  Kentucky  Reso 
lutions  seemed  a  figure  of  the  dim  past.  The  "Vir 
ginia  school"  had  protested  all  through  the  closing 
years  of  the  eighteenth  century  against  the  assump 
tion  of  undelegated  powers  by  the  central  govern 
ment,  but  four  years  of  power  had  wrought  such  a 
change  that  the  Federalists  were  now  asking  within 
what  limits  the  "Virginia  domination"  could  be 
restrained.  A  President  who  took  it  upon  himself 
to  double  the  area  of  the  United  States  by  purchase, 
to  incorporate  a  foreign  population  into  our  body 
politic  and  accept  a  dictatorship  over  them,  to  de 
cide  from  his  own  private  researches  the  limits  of 
territory  in  dispute  between  this  country  and  Spain, 


JEFFERSON  THE  EXPANSIONIST    245 

to  send  a  force  of  soldiers  and  explorers  through  the 
region  belonging  to  a  friendly  power,  to  threaten 
to  join  our  nation  in  marriage  "to  the  British  fleet 
and  jiation"  without  asking  the  consent  of  either, 
to  advise  Congress  to  "cast  metaphysical  subtleties 
behind  them"  and  take  the  risk  of  supporting  an 
executive  who  had  confessedly  "done  an  act  beyond 
the  Constitution" — such  a  President  was  hardly 
less  a  Federalist  than  Washington  or  Adams. 


CHAPTER  IX 
THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  NEUTRALITY 

Peace  is  our  passion.     (Jefferson  to  Sir  John  Sinclair,  June  30, 1803.) 

IT  would  have  been  well  for  his  peace  of  mind  if 
Jefferson  had  swallowed  the  "abominable  slanders" 
of  his  enemies  and  returned  to  his  beloved  Monti- 
cello  at  the  end  of  his  first  administration,  for  his 
second  term  was  a  "sea  of  troubles."  The  triumph 
of  1804  he  took  to  be  the  harbinger  of  a  long  period 
of  harmony  and  prosperity,  when  Republicanism 
should  have  put  down  all  things  under  its  feet. 
Writing  to  General  Heath  in  December  to  rejoice 
with  him  over  the  "conquest"  of  New  England,  he 
said:  "All  will  now  come  to  rights.  .  .  .  The  new 
century  opened  itself  by  committing  us  on  a  boister 
ous  ocean,  but  all  is  now  subsiding;  peace  is  smooth 
ing  our  path  at  home  and  abroad;  and  if  we  are 
not  wanting  in  the  practice  of  justice  and  modera 
tion  our  tranquillity  and  prosperity  may  be  pre 
served  until  increasing  numbers  shall  leave  us  noth 
ing  to  fear  from  abroad.  With  England  we  are  in  a 
cordial  friendship;  with  France  in  the  most  perfect 
understanding;  with  Spain  we  shall  be  always  bick 
ering,  but  never  at  war  till  we  seek  it.  Other  na- 

246 


THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  NEUTRALITY    247 

tions  view  our  course  with  respect  and  friendly 
anxiety."  It  would  have  been  impossible  for  a 
deceptive  optimism  to  pack  more  errors  of  fact  and 
judgment  into  a  single  paragraph.  The  "bicker 
ings"  with  Spain  were  the  only  true  prophecy — a 
prophecy  which  needed  the  touch  of  no  very  live 
coal  from  the  political  altars.  Jefferson  had  spoken 
of  the  presidency  when  he  was  elected  to  the  second 
place  in  1797,  in  terms  perhaps  of  self -solacing  de 
preciation,  as  a  "splendid  misery."  He  was  now  to 
have  full  experience  of  the  misery  of  the  office  whose 
splendor  he  had  always  spurned. 

First  of  all  came  schism  within  the  Republican 
ranks.  We  have  already  touched  on  the  bitter 
strife  of  the  Clinton  and  Livingston  factions  in  New 
York,  with  Aaron  Burr,  the  "arch  opportunist  in 
conspiracy,"  first  coquetting  with  the  Federalists  in 
plans  of  disunion,  then  slaying  their  leader  in  a 
duel.  Faction  raised  its  ugly  head  in  Pennsylvania, 
too,  the  charter  State  of  Republicanism  north  of 
the  Potomac.  Massachusetts,  over  whose  "con 
version"  Jefferson  exulted  in  December,  1804, 
elected  a  Federalist  governor  and  legislature  the 
following  April.  "I  see  with  infinite  pain  the 
bloody  schism  which  has  lately  taken  place  among 
our  friends  in  Pennsylvania  and  New  York,"  wrote 
Jefferson  only  two  months  after  his  second  inaugu 
ration,  "and  which  will  probably  take  place  in  the 
other  States."  This  time  his  prophecy  was  correct. 


248  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

His  own  State  of  Virginia  was  ready  for  partial  re 
volt,  and  the  leader  of  the  disaffection  was  Jeffer 
son's  distant  kinsman,  John  Randolph,  of  Roanoke.1 
" Eccentric,"  " vituperative,"  "sarcastic,"  " un 
controllable,"  "venomous"  are  the  adjectives  which 
precede  Randolph's  name  with  Homeric  constancy, 
and  a  Homeric  phrase,  too,  fitly  describes  his  mental 
superiority  of  his  fellow  members  of  Congress.  In  a 
House  of  mediocrities  he  alone,  like  Tiresias  in  the 
underworld  in  the  Odyssey  "was  wise,  and  the  others 
flitted  as  shadows."  He  might  have  broken  the  ad 
ministration's  control  of  Congress,  had  not  his  ex 
cess  of  zeal  and  temper  delivered  him  into  the  hands 
of  the  patient,  wary  President.  As  it  was,  he  led  a 
schism,  and  gave  the  Federalists  the  immense  satis 
faction  of  seeing  disunion  among  the  "Virginia 
lordlings."  Randolph  prided  himself  on  being  a 
Simon-pure  Republican  of  the  "old  school,"  with 
no  apologies  to  make  for  the  Virginia  and  Kentucky 
Resolutions,  whose  authors  had  gone  far  on  the 
path  of  reconciliation  with  Federalist  doctrines. 
Why  should  Thomas  Jefferson  seek  the  Lincolns 
and  Dearborns  and  Crowninshields  of  Massachu 
setts  for  his  advisers,  drawing  only  a  single  member 
of  his  cabinet  from  the  States  south  of  the  Potomac, 
and  that  one  a  man  still  "tainted"  with  the  old 

1  Randolph  with  his  inimitable  genius  for  barbed  epigram,  likened 
the  second  administration  of  Jefferson  to  the  seven  lean  kine  of 
Pharaoh's  dream  who  rose  up  and  devoured  the  seven  fat  kine  of 
the  first  administration. 


THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  NEUTRALITY    249 

heresy  of  Federalism?    Where  were  the  representa 
tives  of  the  Southern  planters'  interests? 

Randolph's  break  with  the  administration  came 
in  the  winter  session  of  1805-6,  but  he  was  already 
estranged  at  the  opening  of  the  new  presidential 
term.  Both  the  estrangement  and  the  rupture  were 
provoked  by  measures  which  Jefferson  insisted  on 
with  a  tenaciousness  which  contrasted  strangely 
with  his  general  pliability  in  matters  of  practical 
government.  We  have  already  seen  with  what 
jealousy  Jefferson  regarded  the  life-tenure  and  the 
practical  immunity  from  popular  control  of  the 
federal  judiciary.  While  in  many  of  the  colonies 
the  judges  had  been  responsible  to  the  legislatures, 
while  even  in  England  itself  they  were  removable 
on  address  by  the  Houses  of  Parliament,  our  repub 
lican  Constitution  had  out-monarchied  monarchical 
Britain  by  placing  the  judges  beyond  popular,  legis 
lative,  or  executive  control  except  by  the  cumbrous 
process  of  impeachment  "for  high  crimes  and  mis 
demeanors,"  initiated  by  the  House  and  sustained 
by  a  two-thirds  vote  of  the  Senate.  The  Federalists, 
defeated  at  the  polls  in  the  election  of  1800,  had 
"taken  refuge  in  the  judiciary,"  as  Jefferson  com 
plained.  Commissions  had  been  withheld,  to  be 
sure,  from  the  new  batch  of  superfluous  judges  cre 
ated  by  John  Adams  in  the  "midnight  hours"  of- 
his  term,  and  the  act  creating  the  new  positions 
had  been  repealed.  But  still  there  remained  the 


250  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

supreme  court,  inviolate  because  created  by  the 
Constitution.  And  at  its  head  was  a  man  ap 
pointed  by  Adams  after  the  victory  of  the  Jefferson- 
Burr  ticket,  John  Marshall,  who  began  his  long 
career  of  thirty-four  years  of  fortification  of  the 
power  of  the  central  government  by  ruling  in  the 
case  of  Marbury  vs.  Madison  that  the  supreme 
court  could  declare  laws  of  Congress  null  and  void 
if  they  conflicted  with  the  court's  interpretation  of 
the  Constitution. 

Jefferson  ordered  the  attack  on  this  stronghold 
of  Federalism,  the  national  judiciary.  The  first  vic 
tim  was  John  Pickering,  a  district  judge  of  New 
Hampshire,  who  was  impeached  early  in  1804  on 
the  charge  of  habitual  drunkenness,  profanity,  and 
gross  language  of  abuse  on  the  bench,  and,  in  spite 
of  a  touching  petition  from  his  son,  alleging  insanity 
as  the  cause  of  the  old  judge's  deplorable  behavior, 
was  voted  guilty  by  the  Senate  and  removed.  After 
this  "experiment  in  corpore  vili"  the  administration 
sought  higher  game.  Samuel  Chase,  of  Maryland, 
a  veteran  of  the  Revolution  and  a  signer  of  the  Dec 
laration  of  Independence,  had  been  appointed  to 
the  supreme  court  by  Washington  in  1796.  He  had 
been  particularly  fierce  against  the  Republicans  in 
his  conduct  of  trials  under  the  Alien  and  Sedition 
Acts,  overstepping  the  line  of  impartial  instruction 
in  the  points  of  the  law  by  converting  his  charges  to 
the  jury  into  political  harangues.  In  addressing  a 


THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  NEUTRALITY    251 

grand  jury  in  Baltimore  on  May  2,  1803,  he  had 
attacked  the  Jeffersonian  doctrine  of  popular  gov 
ernment  as  "fatal  to  all  security  for  property  and 
personal  liberty"  and  a  harbinger  of  "mobocracy, 
the  worst  of  all  possible  governments. "  Jefferson 
was  stirred  to  revenge.  "  Ought  this  seditious"  (note 
the  adjective  from  the  author  of  the  Kentucky 
Resolutions !)  "and  official  attack  on  the  principles  of 
our  Constitution  .  .  .  to  go  unpunished  ?"  he  wrote 
to  Nicholson;  adding  with  characteristic  caution: 
"for  myself,  it  is  better  that  I  should  not  interfere." 
The  "hint"  was  taken.  The  same  day  that  Judge 
Pickering's  sentence  was  pronounced  the  House 
voted  to  impeach  Samuel  Chase  of  high  crimes  and 
misdemeanors. 

John  Randolph  undertook  the  management  of 
the  case  and  expected  to  make  it  the  grand  event  of 
the  administration.  The  Senate  chamber  was  hung 
with  crimson,  blue,  and  green.  The  temporary  gal 
leries  were  crowded  with  fashionable  spectators. 
The  gala  scene  recalled  the  impeachment  of  Warren 
Hastings  in  Westminster  Hall  twenty  years  before. 
But  John  Randolph  was  not  Edmund  Burke.  His 
sarcastic  jibes  and  vitriolic  ravings,  so  effective  in 
the  running  fire  of  debate  in  the  House,  were  out  of 
place  in  the  solemn  court.  On  some  of  the  charges 
Chase  was  unanimously  acquitted,  and  in  none  could 
a  vote  of  more  than  nineteen  senators  (four  less  than 
the  necessary  two-thirds)  be  marshalled  against  him, 


252  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

On  the  1st  day  of  March,  1805,  three  days  before 
Jefferson's  second  inauguration,  Aaron  Burr  rose 
from  his  chair  as  presiding  officer  of  the  Senate,  and 
with  ill-concealed  congratulation  in  his  voice  and 
gesture  declared  the  defendant  "not  guilty."  As 
twenty-four  of  the  thirty-four  members  of  the  Sen 
ate  were  Republicans,  it  was  evident  that  Judge 
Chase  had  not  been  acquitted  by  the  strength  of 
the  "Federalist  faction";  and  it  was  also  evident  to 
John  Randolph  that  the  cause  of  his  party's  infidelity 
and  his  own  humiliation  was  the  baleful  influence  of 
the  Northern  and  Middle  States  on  the  administra 
tion.  Jefferson  had  set  on  foot  the  impeachment 
proceedings,  but  had  not  been  able  to  hold  his  fol 
lowers  in  the  Senate  together  for  a  verdict  of  con 
demnation.  The  President  was  shielded  behind  his 
discreet  silence,  while  the  obloquy  of  a  public  defeat 
rested  on  John  Randolph  of  Roanoke.  He  was 
through  with  being  the  catspaw  to  pull  Thomas 
Jefferson's  chestnuts  from  the  fire. 

Randolph's  opportunity  for  revenge  was  not  long 
delayed.  Since  his  excursion  into  the  historical 
study  of  the  boundaries  of  Louisiana  during  his 
summer  rest  at  Monticello,  Jefferson  had  been  ob 
sessed  with  the  idea  that  Florida  was  rightfully 
ours.  He  came  to  feel  that  the  whole  glory  of  the 
Louisiana  Purchase  for  his  administration  depended 
on  the  possession  of  Florida.  But  Spain  interposed 
her  stubborn  refusal  to  give  up  an  inch  of  territory 


THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  NEUTRALITY    253 

east  of  the  Iberville  and  the  Lakes,  while  Talleyrand, 
after  having  encouraged  the  American  envoys  to 
push  the  claim,  blandly  announced  that  France  had 
not  really  received  Florida  from  Spain  in  1800,  and 
hence  could  not  have  sold  it  to  the  United  States  in 

1803.  Jefferson,  however,  thought  he  knew  better 
what  Napoleon  had  bought  and  sold  than  Napoleon 
knew  himself,  and  bent  all  the  powers  of  his  diplo 
macy  to  persuade  the  Corsican,  who  assumed  the 
imperial  crown  of  Charlemagne  on   December  2, 

1804,  to  force  Spain  to  relinquish  Florida.     It  was 
the  most  unwise  policy  of  Jefferson's  administra 
tion.     It  exposed  him  to  the  triple  charge  of  im 
patience,    infatuation,    and    venality:    impatience, 
because   Jefferson  himself  had  declared  that  the 
Floridas  would  come  to  us  sooner  or  later  through 
the  development  of  our  Mississippi  Territory;  infat 
uation  because  he  thought  he  could  exert  pressure 
on  the  man  who  was  setting  out  on  the  conquest 
of  Europe1 ;  and  venality,  because  he  was  willing  to 
pay  again  secretly  through  Napoleon  as  the  "honest 

1  Little  did  Jefferson  realize  the  course  which  the  renewed  war  be 
tween  England  and  Napoleon  would  take  in  Europe.  He  looked  on 
it  as  an  embarrassment  to  Napoleon,  which  would  dispose  him  to 
lend  a  favorable  ear  to  representations  from  Washington!  "The 
present  crisis,"  he  said  in  a  message  to  Congress,  December  6,  1805, 
"is  favorable  for  pressing  such  a  settlement  [the  claim  to  Florida] 
and  not  a  moment  should  be  lost  in  availing  ourselves  of  it."  Four 
days  before  this  message  was  read  Napoleon  had  shattered  the  im 
perial  armies  of  Austria  and  Russia  at  Austerlitz,  and  established 
the  mastery  of  the  Continent  of  Europe  which  was  to  be  finally 
broken  only  on  the  field  of  Waterloo  a  decade  later. 


254  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

broker"  for  what  he  publicly  insisted  we  had  al 
ready  bought. 

In  fact,  Jefferson  was  in  a  most  uncomfortable 
dilemma.  To  waive  the  claim  to  Florida  would 
tarnish,  as  he  believed,  the  most  brilliant  and  popu 
lar  act  of  his  administration.  To  insist  on  the  claim 
to  Florida  would  mean  war  with  Spain  (unless  Na 
poleon  should  help  us),  which  Jefferson  was  more 
anxious  to  avoid  than  the  Court  of  Madrid.  "Why 
should  we  give  up  Florida  without  a  struggle,"  said 
the  Spaniards,  "when  all  you  could  get  as  a  result 
of  a  victory  over  our  arms  would  be  just  Florida?" 
In  this  dilemma  Jefferson  resorted  to  tactics  which 
he  had  practised  three  years  before  in  the  purchase 
of  Louisiana.  Just  as  he  then  threatened  that  we 
would  "marry  ourselves  to  the  British  fleet  and 
nation"  the  moment  the  French  established  them 
selves  at  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi,  and  at  the 
same  time  instructed  our  minister  to  negotiate  for 
the  purchase  of  New  Orleans,  so  now  he  threatened 
war  with  Spain  in  public,  hoping  to  frighten  her  to 
consent  to  a  bargain  in  private.  The  regular  annual 
message  which  was  sent  in  to  Congress  on  Decem 
ber  3,  1805,  was  quite  belligerent  in  tone,  as  it  re 
counted  the  manifold  offenses  of  Spain:  her  refusal 
to  recognize  the  just  limits  of  Louisiana,  her  depre 
dations  on  our  commerce  at  Mobile,  the  marauding 
expeditions  of  her  subjects  into  our  Mississippi  Ter 
ritory.  A  further  communication  on  the  subject 


THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  NEUTRALITY    255 

was  promised  shortly.  Three  days  later  a  "confi 
dential"  message  came  from  the  President  and  was 
read  behind  closed  doors  to  a  House  tense  with  the 
expectation  of  the  recommendation  of  war.  But 
the  message  proved  to  be  as  mild  as  any  pacifist 
could  wish.  Instead  of  calling  for  the  use  of  the 
army  and  navy  against  perfidious  Spain,  it  sug 
gested  that  the  time  was  "favorable  for  pressing  a 
settlement,"  and  pledged  the  President  to  pursue 
with  zeal  the  course  which  Congress  (to  whom  it 
"belonged  exclusively  to  yield  or  deny"  [resist]) 
should  determine.  This  cryptic  message  was  re 
ferred  to  a  committee  of  which  John  Randolph  was 
chairman.  When  Randolph  demanded  in  a  per 
sonal  interview  at  the  White  House  what  the  Presi 
dent  meant  in  plain  terms,  he  was  told  that  two 
million  dollars  were  wanted  to  secure  the  cession  of 
the  Floridas. 

Randolph  had  not  scrupled  to  lend  his  aid  to  a 
similar  negotiation  for  the  purchase  of  Louisiana, 
but  that  was  in  the  early  days  when  he  was  friendly 
to  the  administration.  Now  Randolph,  to  the  dis 
may  of  the  President's  friends,  rose  in  his  seat  and 
opposed  the  appropriation  of  the  two  million  dollars 
with  all  the  sarcastic  vehemence  of  his  nature. 
What  was  the  meaning  of  this  double  dealing  of  the 
President,  he  asked :  a  message  for  the  public  breath 
ing  dire  defiance  and  a  secret  message  for  Congress 
hinting  that  they  might  choose  peace  and  the  pay- 


256  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

ment  of  tribute?  Did  the  President  wish  to  pose 
before  England  and  Spain  as  a  warrior  bold,  and 
shift  to  Congress  the  unpopular  role  of  seeming  to 
restrain  him  within  the  peaceful  bounds  which  he 
never  in  his  heart  meant  to  exceed?  Were  we  to 
"prostrate  our  national  character  to  excite  one  na 
tion  [France]  by  money  to  bully  another  nation 
[Spain]  out  of  its  property?"  He  for  one  would 
have  no  part  in  this  nefarious  scheme  to  "  deliver 
the  public  purse  to  the  first  cutthroat  that  de 
manded  it." 

Surprised  and  chagrined  by  this  proclamation  of 
rebellion,  Jefferson  saw  himself  obliged  to  choose 
between  the  harmony  of  his  party  and  the  mainte 
nance  of  his  policy.  He  chose  the  latter,  and  John 
Randolph  led  off  his  group  of  " Quids"  in  schism. 
They  were  not  many.  Jefferson  affected  a  certain 
indifference  to  their  defection,  speaking  of  them  a 
year  later  in  a  letter  to  W.  C.  Nicholas  as  a  "little 
band  of  schismatists  who  will  be  3  or  4  (all  tongue)." 
But  in  spite  of  this  exaggerated  depreciation  Jeffer 
son  felt  it  keenly  when  twelve  of  the  twenty-two 
Virginia  members  of  the  House  voted  against  the 
two-million-dollar  bill.  He  carried  the  measure,  by 
the  rather  narrow  margin  of  seventy-six  to  fifty-four, 
and  with  it  a  bill  to  prohibit  American  trade  with 
the  French  island  of  Santo  Domingo,  which  Talley 
rand  had  declared  "must  stop."  So  far  was  he  will 
ing  to  go  on  the  road  of  deference  to  Napoleon ! 


THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  NEUTRALITY    257 

Still  the  price  he  paid  for  having  his  way  was  high, 
and  the  returns  that  he  got  were  small.  He  incurred 
the  charge  of  truckling  to  France,  of  holding  the 
whip-hand  over  Congress,  of  alienating  some  of  the 
leading  Virginia  Republicans,  and  of  causing  an 
open  rupture  in  his  party,  just  like  John  Adams. 
Napoleon  took  not  a  single  step  toward  satisfying 
our  claims  to  the  "rightful  boundaries  of  Louisiana." 
The  Emperor  was  busy  elsewhere.  His  face  was 
turned  from  Washington  toward  Jena,  Eylau,  and 
Friedland.  Florida  still  dangled  before  Jefferson's 
Tantalus  gaze.  A  dozen  years  were  to  pass  before 
Spain,  exhausted  by  her  struggle  with  the  mighty 
Corsican,  and  shorn  of  her  colonies  in  the  New 
World,  was  to  yield  us  title  to  the  shores  which  Ponce 
de  Leon  had  christened  the  "land  of  flowers"  in  the 
days  of  her  strength  and  glory  three  centuries  past. 
The  stormy  session  of  the  ninth  Congress  which 
had  opened  on  the  day  of  Austerlitz  (December  2, 
1805)  came  to  a  close  on  April  21,  1806.  The 
President  had  carried  through  a  fruitless  programme 
at  the  cost  of  divided  counsels  and  waning  popular 
ity.  "Mr.  Jefferson  has  worried  himself  so  much 
with  the  movements  of  Congress,"  wrote  the  French 
minister  at  Washington  to  Talleyrand  on  May  10, 
1806,  "that  he  has  made  himself  ill  and  grown  ten 
years  older."  But  Jefferson's  troubles  were  only 
beginning.  While  he  was  laboring  during  the  sum 
mer  of  1806  to  heal  the  schism  in  the  party,  combat- 


258  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

ing  the  charges  of  inconsistency  and  intrigue  which 
John  Randolph  was  publishing  over  the  signature 
of  Decius  in  the  Richmond  Enquirer,  indignantly 
denying  to  Duane  the  rumor  that  he  had  "denounced 
the  old  Republicans  by  the  epithet  of  Jacobins,"  and 
exhorting  his  secretaries,  Callatin,  Madison,  and 
Dearborn  not  to  let  the  "malignant  .  .  .  efforts  of 
their  adversaries  succeed  in  sowing  tares"  between 
them,  difficulties  and  dangers  were  multiplying  at 
home  and  abroad.  Persistent  and  ugly  rumors 
came  to  Washington  of  the  treasonable  movements 
of  Aaron  Burr  in  the  Western  country,  and  the  dep 
redations  of  French  and  English  cruisers  on  our 
commerce  were  growing  intolerable. 

Just  what  Burr  intended  to  accomplish  by  his 
plots  in  the  Southwest  will  never  be  clear,  nor  could 
he  probably  have  given  a  coherent  account  of  them 
himself.  For  his  plans  evidently  changed  with  his 
fortunes.  It  is  certain,  however,  that  after  the  ruin 
of  his  political  career  in  the  East  by  the  slaying  of 
Hamilton  he  entertained  grandiose  notions  of  start 
ing  a  "new  empire"  in  the  West.  Now  it  was  a 
scheme  to  detach  all  the  States  west  of  the  Alle- 
ghanies  and  join  them  to  Louisiana,  as  he  confided 
to  the  English  minister,  Merry,  whom  he  asked  for 
financial  aid  to  the  extent  of  half  a  million,  and  a 
supporting  squadron  of  British  ships  at  the  mouth 
of  the  Mississippi.  Now  it  was  a  desperate  plot  to 
kidnap  the  heads  of  the  government,  seize  the  pub- 


THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  NEUTRALITY    259 

lie  treasure,  and  sail  for  New  Orleans  to  proclaim 
the  independence  of  Louisiana.  Now  it  took  the 
form  of  a  great  empire  in  Mexico  and  Central 
America,  in  which  he  should  be  the  new  Monte- 
zuma.  Now  it  dwindled  into  the  harmless  scheme 
of  purchasing  and  colonizing  the  Bastrop  grant  on 
the  Red  River.  The  whole  episode,  which  fills  the 
two  years  from  Burr's  retirement  from  the  vice- 
presidency  in  1805  to  his  trial  in  Richmond  in  1807, 
is  a  tangled  drama  of  intrigue  and  deception,  with 
the  two  arch  scoundrels,  Burr  and  Wilkinson,  in  the 
title-roles;  with  Major-General  Andrew  Jackson 
grazing  the  edge  of  treason  in  his  ostentatious  recep 
tion  to  Burr  in  Tennessee,  and  Henry  Clay  pledging 
his  own  "honor  and  innocence"  in  support  of  Burr's 
before  the  grand  jury  of  Kentucky;  with  the  blan 
dishments  of  Theodosia  Burr  Alston,  the  "empress 
elect,"  and  the  poor  braggart  dupe,  Blennerhasset, 
shorn  of  his  money. 

Jefferson  had  at  first  rumors,  then  more  definite 
reports  from  several  sources,  of  "strange  and  sus 
picious  movements"  by  Burr  in  the  West,  early  in 
the  year  1806,  but  he  treated  them  with  indifference. 
He  was  absorbed  in  his  quest  for  Florida.  General 
Eaton,  a  hero  of  the  Tripolitan  war,  called  on  him 
a  few  weeks  after  he  had  carried  the  two-million-dol 
lar  bill  through  the  House,  and  told  him  from  good 
evidence  that  "if  Colonel  Burr  was  not  disposed  of 
we  should  in  eighteen  months  have  an  insurrection 


260  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

if  not  a  revolution  on  the  waters  of  the  Mississippi." 
Jefferson  replied  that  he  had  "too  much  confidence 
in  the  .  .  .  attachment  of  the  people  of  that  coun 
try  to  the  Union  to  admit  of  any  apprehensions  of 
that  kind."  Mr.  Henry  Adams  says  in  his  detailed 
account  of  the  conspiracy  that  "a  word  quietly 
written  by  Jefferson  to  one  or  two  persons  in  the 
Western  country  would  have  stopped  Burr  short  in 
his  path  and  would  have  brought  Wilkinson  to  his 
knees."  Yet  Jefferson,  either  on  account  of  what 
Randolph  called  "the  easy  credulity  of  his  tem 
per,"  or  because  Wilkinson  had  some  hold  on  him 
which  we  cannot  explain,  or  because  the  most  con 
vincing  evidence  of  Burr's  treason  was  furnished  by 
a  Federalist  district  attorney,  took  no  action  until 
near  the  close  of  November,  1806,  and  then  only 
issued  a  general  proclamation  without  even  men 
tioning  Burr's  name.  "Sundry  persons,"  it  de 
clared,  were  conspiring  against  Spain  (!),  and  all 
officers  of  the  United  States  were  ordered  to  seize 
and  detain  such  persons.  Burr  slipped  by  the  forts 
at  the  mouth  of  the  Ohio  and  kept  ahead  of  the 
slowly  travelling  proclamation  on  his  way  down  the 
Mississippi.  It  remained  for  Wilkinson,  betraying 
Burr  as  he  had  for  years  betrayed  his  country  by 
the  acceptance  of  Spanish  gold,  to  bring  the  "con 
spiracy"  to  a  halt  by  prohibiting  Burr's  approach 
to  New  Orleans.  Realizing  that  the  game  was  up, 
Burr  surrendered  to  Governor  Meade,  of  the  Missis- 


THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  NEUTRALITY    261 

sippi  Territory,  escaped  in  the  guise  of  a  woodman, 
and  was  finally  apprehended,  at  the  end  of  Febru 
ary,  1807,  near  the  Spanish  frontier  of  West  Florida, 
and  sent  to  Richmond  for  trial. 

After  his  "culpable  negligence"  in  not  suppressing 
the  conspiracy,  Jefferson  now  showed  great  zeal  in 
prosecuting  the  victim.  But  his  unfortunate  delay 
had  made  him  rather  the  accomplice  of  Wilkinson 
than  the  dignified  first  magistrate  of  the  land,  the 
sworn  defender  of  its  Constitution  and  laws.  His 
implacable  enemy,  John  Marshall,  presided  over  the 
circuit  court  at  Richmond,  and  designated  as  fore 
man  of  the  grand  jury  a  newer  but  no  less  implaca 
ble  enemy  of  the  administration — John  Randolph, 
of  Roanoke.  A  third  enemy,  Luther  Martin,  of 
Maryland,  whom  Jefferson  called  an  "impudent 
Federal  bull-dog,"  was  the  leading  counsel  for  Burr, 
as  he  had  been  for  Chase.  At  the  hands  of  these 
men  the  trial  soon  assumed  the  form  of  an  inquisi 
tion  into  the  conduct  of  Thomas  Jefferson  rather 
than  of  Aaron  Burr.  Instructed  by  Marshall  on 
the  nature  of  the  "overt  act"  which  constituted 
treason,  John  Randolph  refused  to  bring  in  a  bill 
of  indictment  on  that  score,  and  Burr  was  tried  for 
a  misdemeanor  only.  The  court  summoned  Jeffer 
son  by  subpoena  to  appear  in  person  with  papers  re 
lating  to  the  alleged  conspiracy,  and  when  the  Presi 
dent  refused  to  obey  the  summons  on  the  ground 
that  it  would  be  incompatible  with  the  dignity  of 


262  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

his  position,  he  was  obliged  to  endure  sarcasms  from 
Luther  Martin,  which  certainly  did  not  elevate  that 
dignity.  He  was  accused  of  having  prejudged  Burr 
and  "let  slip  the  dogs  of  war  and  the  hell-hounds  of 
persecution ".  against  him.  Jefferson  did,  in  fact, 
write  more  than  a  dozen  letters  from  Washington 
and  Monticello  to  George  Hay,  the  district  attorney 
at  Richmond,  spurring  on  the  prosecution,  threat 
ening  that  Marshall's  career  would  be  at  an  end  if 
he  allowed  Burr  to  escape  punishment,  and  even 
suggesting  that  Luther  Martin  be  arraigned  as  a 
particeps  criminis.  He  was  driven  to  these  extremi 
ties  partly  by  the  embarrassment  of  having  to  lean 
for  his  star  witness  on  James  Wilkinson  (a  very  rot 
ten  if  not  a  broken  reed),  and  partly  by  the  disgrace 
ful  partisanship  of  the  Federalists,  who  for  the  sake 
of  humiliating  Jefferson  were  willing  to  caress  the 
man  who  had  cost  them  New  York  and  the  election 
of  1800  and  had  slain  their  leader  in  duel.  The 
Burr  trial  was  rather  a  political  campaign  than  a 
judicial  process.  When  the  prisoner  was  acquitted 
the  Federalists  celebrated  with  feasting  and  hilarity. 
Even  John  Marshall  felt  a  "sober  satisfaction"  be 
neath  his  impassive  mien,  and  John  Randolph  was 
avenged  for  another  acquittal,  two  years  before, 
when  he  had  borne  the  odium  of  defeat  in  doing  the 
will  of  Thomas  Jefferson. 

While  these  scenes  were  being  enacted  in  Rich 
mond,  "scenes,"  said  Jefferson,  "never  before  ex- 


THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  NEUTRALITY    263 

hibited  in  any  country  where  all  regard  to  public 
character  had  not  yet  been  thrown  off/7  a  crisis  arose 
with  Great  Britain,  which  threw  our  land  into  a 
state  of  excitement  and  exasperation  such  as  it  had 
not  experienced  since  the  days  of  Lexington  and 
Bunker  Hill.  On  June  22,  1807;  his  Majesty's  ship, 
Leopard,  fired  on  the  American  frigate  Chesapeake, 
off  the  Virginia  coast,  and  left  her,  with  twenty-one 
killed  or  wounded  men  on  her  decks,  her  hull  pierced 
by  twenty-two  solid  shot  and  her  rigging  lacerated 
by  grape,  to  creep  back  to  her  anchorage  at  Norfolk. 
To  understand  this  outrageous  act,  whose  conse 
quences  embarrassed  the  remaining  months  of  Jef 
ferson's  already  sorely  embarrassed  administration, 
and  led  eventually  to  our  second  war  with  England, 
we  must  turn  to  a  brief  review  of  our  foreign  rela 
tions  in  the  years  immediately  preceding  the  Chesa 
peake  affair. 

During  the  ten  years  from  the  Jay  Treaty  to  the 
second  inauguration  of  Jefferson,  we  were  on  good 
terms  with  England.  Our  difficulties  with  France 
(the  quarrel  with  the  Directory,  the  X  Y  Z  affair, 
the  quasi  war  of  1799-1800)  tended  to  obscure  the 
unsatisfactory  features  of  the  Jay  Treaty,  while  the 
able  diplomacy  of  our  minister,  Rufus  King,  im 
proved  our  relations  with  the  Court  of  St.  James. 
Moreover,  England's  activity  in  the  French  Revo 
lutionary  wars  diminished  toward  the  close  of  the 
century  and  expired  finally  in  the  Treaty  of  Amiens, 


264  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

concluded  with  the  First  Consul  on  March  25,  1802. 
Since  our  controversies  with  England  and  France 
over  the  rights  of  neutral  trade  waxed  and  waned 
with  the  severity  of  the  European  struggle,  the 
early  years  of  Jefferson's  presidency  were  peculiarly 
favorable  to  our  peace  and  prosperity.  The  Louisi 
ana  Purchase  put  us  on  those  terms  of  good-will 
with  France  which  always  result  from  an  important 
transaction  highly  satisfactory  to  both  parties.  A 
few  weeks  later  (July,  1803)  Rufus  King,  across  the 
Channel,  concluded  two  conventions  with  the  Ad- 
dington  ministry  which  went  far  toward  removing 
the  lingering  resentment  over  the  Jay  Treaty.  Eng- 
lan  accepted  six  hundred  thousand  pounds  in  pay 
ment  of  the  long-standing  debts  to  her  creditors 
and  agreed  to  commissions  for  the  determination  of 
our  northwestern  and  northeastern  boundaries.  The 
Barings,  with  the  consent  of  the  British  Government, 
advanced  the  cash  on  our  Louisiana  stock.  King 
was  even  confident  that  he  would  have  persuaded 
the  ministry  to  stop  the  impressment  of  American 
sailors  if  he  had  not  been  on  the  eve  of  his  departure 
for  home.  "The  present  administration,"  wrote 
Jefferson,  "is  the  most  favorable  that  has  existed 
or  could  exist  for  the  interests  of  the  United  States." 
Then  the  storm  burst  in  Europe  which  was  des 
tined  finally  to  draw  us  into  the  maelstrom  of  war. 
Eleven  days  after  the  signatures  were  set  to  the 
Louisiana  Purchase  Treaty,  Napoleon  made  his 


THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  NEUTRALITY    265 

categorical  demand  on  the  British  ambassador  for 
"  Malta  or  war/'  and  Great  Britain  took  up  the  chal 
lenge  by  a  formal  declaration  of  hostilities,  May  18, 
1803.  This  opened  the  titanic  struggle  which  was 
to  convulse  Europe  from  St.  Petersburg  to  Lisbon, 
and  was  to  end  only  with  the  exile  of  the  Corsican 
to  St.  Helena.  We  have  seen  how  Jefferson  at  first 
mistakenly  supposed  that  the  renewal  of  war  in 
Europe,  from  which  we  were  so  far  and  fortunately 
aloof,  would  only  serve  to  advance  our  interests. 
Napoleon's  "  embarrassment,"  he  thought,  would 
be  the  favorable  moment  to  press  his  darling  proj 
ect  of  the  claim  to  Florida;  while  England  would 
do  nothing  to  risk  losing  a  trade  of  forty  million 
dollars  with  the  United  States.  "Our  commerce," 
he  wrote,  "is  so  valuable  to  them  that  they  will  be 
glad  to  purchase  it  when  the  only  price  we  ask  is  to 
do  us  justice.  I  believe  we  have  in  our  hands  the 
means  of  peaceable  coercion." 

The  events  of  the  summer  and  autumn  of  1805 
would  have  taught  a  statesman  less  enamoured  than 
Jefferson  of  the  abstract  principles  of  political  ethics 
that  peaceful  coercion  of  England  and  France  had 
about  as  much  chance  of  success  as  peaceful  remon 
strance  with  an  "infuriated  highwayman."  In 
July  Sir  William  Scott,  of  the  admiralty  court,  re 
versing  a  decision  of  four  years  earlier,  declared  in 
the  Essex  case  that  neutral  ships  could  not  carry  the 
enemy's  products  from  the  West  Indies  to  Europe, 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

even  if  breaking  the  voyage  by  call  at  an  American 
port.  In  August,  Napoleon  moved  his  grand  army 
from  its  camp  at  Boulogne  in  his  wonderful  march 
across  Europe  to  the  Danube.  In  October  Lord 
Nelson  shattered  the  combined  French  and  Spanish 
fleets  at  Trafalgar  and  made  England  mistress  of 
the  ocean.  In  December  Napoleon  crushed  the 
combined  armies  of  Austria  and  Russia  at  Austerlitz 
and  made  himself  master  of  the  Continent.  From 
this  time  forth  England  had  one  policy,  to  control 
the  ocean-borne  trade  of  the  world.  Her  life  de 
pended  on  her  food  supplies  from  abroad.  The 
wealth  for  her  gigantic  struggle  against  Napoleon 
depended  on  her  keeping  open  the  markets  for  the 
disposal  of  her  manufactures.  Britannia  must  lit 
erally  rule  the  waves.  Neutral  trade  must  obey 
her  orders  or  cease  to  exist. 

Jefferson  recognized  the  change  in  England's  atti 
tude;  still  he  labored  for  peace.  He  hailed  with  joy 
the  accession  of  the  liberal  and  friendly  Whig  states 
man,  Charles  James  Fox,  on  the  death  of  Pitt  in 
January,  1806.  In  May  he  sent  William  Pinkney, 
of  Maryland,  to  join  Monroe  in  London  to  negotiate 
a  new  commercial  treaty,  instructing  him  to  ask  for 
a  cessation  of  impressments,  the  replacement  of  our 
West  Indian  trade  on  the  basis  of  1801,  and  repara 
tion  for  depredations  on  our  commerce  under  the 
Essex  ruling.  Jefferson  could  not  or  would  not  see 
that  a  nation  whose  foreign  trade  had  grown  from 


THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  NEUTRALITY    267 

363,111  tons  in  1791  to  669,921  tons  in  1800,  and 
was  well  on  its  way  to  the  million  mark,  did  not 
control  the  maritime  policy  of  the  world.  He  still 
believed  after  Trafalgar  that  we  "held  England  by 
the  throat." 

Before  Monroe  and  Pinkney  put  their  names  to  a 
treaty  so  careless  of  American  rights  that  Jefferson 
would  not  even  submit  it  to  the  Senate  for  ratifica 
tion,  a  new  chapter  opened  in  the  European  struggle. 
The  British  ministry,  unwilling  to  see  Napoleon's 
growing  empire  supplied  with  colonial  products 
through  the  neutral  carrying  trade  after  the  French 
fleet  had  been  swept  from  the  ocean,  began  to  issue 
orders  blockading  the  coast  of  the  continent  (Fox's 
blockade  of  April  8,  1806).  Napoleon,  on  his  part, 
after  failing  to  subdue  the  British  Isles  by  force,  de 
termined  to  starve  them  by  prohibiting  all  trade  in 
English  merchandise  on  the  continent  and  ordering 
the  seizure  of  all  vessels  coming  from  England  or 
the  colonies  to  a  port  within  his  control  (Berlin  De 
cree  of  November  21,  1806).  The  British  ministry, 
with  quite  brutal  frankness,  made  o&r  repudiation 
of  the  Berlin  Decree  the  condition  for  fcfcy  treaty  of 
commerce  with  the  United  States;  while  Napoleon, 
with  no  more  good-will  but  with  a  cynical  flattery, 
"assumed"  that  the  Americans  would  not  submit 
to  the  "unjust  and  illegal  measures"  of  Great 
Britain,  which  "dishonored  them  and  disgraced 
their  independence."  The  French  minister  at  Wash- 


268  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

ington,  Turreau,  unable  to  appreciate  Jefferson's 
policy  of  "peaceful  coercion/'  in  the  face  of  such 
manifest  encroachment  on  our  rights  and  dignity 
by  Great  Britain,  could  attribute  our  passive  be 
havior  only  to  our  "sordid  avarice,  sentiments  of 
fear  and  of  servile  deference  for  England  with  which 
the  inhabitants  of  the  American  Union  are  pene 
trated." 

Such  was  the  deplorable  situation  of  our  com 
merce  and  diplomacy  when  the  attack  of  the  Leop 
ard  on  the  Chesapeake  aroused  our  country  to  a 
state  of  excitement  "unparalleled  since  the  affray 
at  Lexington."  Jefferson  assembled  his  scattered 
cabinet  on  July  2,  and  issued  a  proclamation  order 
ing  all  armed  vessels  of  Great  Britain  out  of  the 
waters  of  the  United  States.  He  directed  gun 
boats  to  points  on  our  coast  liable  to  attack,  ordered 
the  governors  of  the  States  to  have  one  hundred 
thousand  militia  ready  for  call,  summoned  our  fleet 
from  the  Mediterranean,  and  despatched  a  war-ship 
appropriately  named  the  Revenge  to  England  to 
demand  the  disavowal  of  the  attack  on  the  Chesa 
peake,  the  restoration  of  the  men  taken  from  her 
decks,  and  the  punishment  of  Admiral  Berkeley, 
the  commanding  officer  of  the  British  Atlantic 
squadron.  The  country  stood  solidly  behind  the 
President.  "But  one  feeling  pervades  the  nation," 
wrote  Nicholson;  "all  distinctions  of  Federalism  and 
Democracy  are  vanished.  ...  I  trust  in  God  the 


THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  NEUTRALITY    269 

Revenge  is  going  out  to  bring  Monroe  and  Pinkney 
home." 

That  Jefferson's  measures  were  ineffectual  was 
due  rather  to  the  incalculable  situation  in  Europe 
than  to  the  sentiments  of  "fear  and  servile  defer 
ence"  with  which  the  French  minister — followed 
by  some  American  historians — charged  him.  On 
the  very  day  of  the  Chesapeake  affair  a  reaction 
ary  Parliament  met  at  Westminster  with  a  clear 
majority  of  two  hundred  Tory  members,  eager  to 
support  the  most  dictatorial  coercion  of  neutrals 
advocated  by  Spencer  Perceval  and  George  Canning, 
and  to  hound  on  the  chauvinistic  editors  who  were 
denouncing  America  as  "an  insignificant  and  puny 
power,"  which  would  not  be  "suffered  to  mutilate 
Britain's  proud  sovereignty  of  the  ocean."  Three 
days  after  the  Chesapeake  affair,  the  victor  of  Fried- 
land  met  Alexander  of  Russia  on  a  raft  in  the  Nie- 
men  and  planned  the  division  of  Europe  between 
them  and  the  annihilation  of  Great  Britain.  It  was 
the  climax  of  the  struggle  between  the  master  of 
the  land  and  the  mistress  of  the  seas,  between  "the 
tiger  and  the  shark."  And  in  the  struggle,  which 
meant  empire  for  Napoleon  and  existence  for  Eng 
land,  the  last  shreds  of  neutral  rights  were  swept 
away.  British  Orders  in  Council  declared  every 
port  from  which  the  British  flag  was  excluded  (that 
is,  practically  the  whole  Continent  of  Europe)  under 
strict  blockade,  and  compelled  all  neutral  vessels 


270  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

wishing  to  enter  such  ports  to  call  first  at  a  British 
port  and  pay  "  transit  duties "  to  the  British  Gov 
ernment.  Napoleon  replied  with  the  Milan  Decree 
(December  17,  1807) ,  ordering  the  seizure  of  any 
vessel  that  had  touched  at  a  British  port,  submitted 
to  search  on  the  high  seas  by  a  British  cruiser,  or 
paid  dues  to  the  British  customs  officers,  on  the 
ground  that  such  a  vessel  had  suffered  itself  to  be 
"denationalized"  and  become  English  property. 
Great  Britain  closed  the  Continent  to  us  except 
through  English  ports:  Napoleon  threatened  con 
fiscation  of  every  ship  that  came  through  those 
ports.  Our  commerce  was  ground  between  the 
Orders  and  the  Decrees  as  between  the  upper  and 
the  nether  millstones. 

Three  courses  were  open  to  Jefferson.  He  might 
declare  war  against  England  or  France,  or  both;  he 
might  let  things  continue  as  they  were,  still  hoping 
to  make  the  thin  voice  of  diplomacy  heard  above 
the  increasing  storm  of  battle;  or  he  might  punish 
both  England  and  Napoleon  by  cutting  off  a  com 
merce  which  he  believed  absolutely  necessary  to 
their  existence.  If  England  fined  our  trade  thou 
sands  of  dollars  by  the  new  Orders  in  Council,  we 
would  fine  her  treasury  millions  by  cutting  off  that 
trade  altogether.  Jefferson  had  really  no  idea  of 
going  to  war.  He  saw,  as  well  as  John  Randolph, 
the  futility  of  a  struggle  against  "the  leviathan  of 
the  ocean/'  with  such  feeble  military  and  naval  re- 


THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  NEUTRALITY    271 

sources  as  six  years  of  a  peace  economy  had  left  to 
the  United  States.  At  the  same  time  Jefferson  was 
unwilling  frankly  to  accept  the  logic  of  his  own  pol 
icy.  His  popularity  was  dearer  to  him  as  his  term 
of  office  drew  to  an  end.  He  assumed  a  tone  of 
firmness,  and  even  of  menace,  in  his  proclamations 
and  messages,  while  he  sought  by  secret  expedients 
to  " arrange  matters"  with  the  British  minister  and 
envoy.  In  the  midsummer  of  1807,  when  the 
American  people  were  seething  with  indignation, 
Jefferson  breathed  out  defiance:  "If  England  does 
us  ample  justice  it  will  be  a  war  saved,  but  I  do 
not  expect  it."  "If  we  must  have  a  war  it  is  a  good 
time,  for  England  has  Napoleon  on  her  hands."  "I 
say  Down  with  England!  and  as  for  what  Bonaparte 
is  to  do  to  us,  let  us  trust  to  the  chapter  of  acci 
dents."  When,  however,  the  news  reached  America 
at  the  same  moment  that  Napoleon  had  determined 
to  enforce  the  Berlin  Decree  against  us,  and  that 
the  Tory  ministers  of  George  III  refused  to  yield  an 
inch  in  the  matter  of  impressments,  Jefferson  spoke 
no  more  of  war.  He  sent  his  orders  to  an  obedient 
Congress  to  lay  an  indefinite  embargo  on  the  foreign 
shipping  of  America,  while  his  secretary  of  the 
navy,  Robert  Smith,  privately  interceded,  at  his 
request,  with  Canning's  special  envoy,  George  Rose, 
to  have  "such  steps  taken  as  would  conciliate  the 
President's  wish  to  give  his  Majesty  satisfaction 
.  .  .  and  yet  to  retain  what  was  preeminently  valu- 


272  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

able  to  him."  The  United  States,  having  lost  hope 
of  obtaining  the  Floridas  through  Napoleon's  good 
offices,  said  Smith,  now  "sincerely  wished  to  see 
them  in  the  hands  of  Great  Britain." 

It  is  impossible  to  approve  Jefferson's  conduct  in 
all  this,  though  we  need  not  go  to  the  length  of 
Henry  Adams's  harsh  judgment  that  he  "trafficked 
the  people's  dignity  and  his  own  self-respect,"  and 
"begged  for  mercy  from  a  British  minister"  in  order 
to  save  his  popularity.  Until  the  batch  of  ill  news 
(which  no  man  could  foresee)  arrived  from  Europe 
in  December,  1807,  Jefferson  undoubtedly  believed 
sincerely  in  the  efficacy  of  his  humane  and  economic 
project  of  "peaceful  coercion."  And  it  is  probable 
that  he  retired  to  private  life,  fifteen  months  later, 
still  convinced  that  his  plan  would  have  worked 
had  the  cabinet,  Congress,  and  the  people  stood  by 
him  as  they  did  in  the  Louisiana  negotiation.  He 
was  mistaken  in  his  judgment,  deceived  and  disap 
pointed  in  his  hopes;  but  he  was  not  a  hypocrite. 

The  wisdom  of  Jefferson's  behavior  is  quite  an 
other  question  than  its  honesty.  A  fair  judgment 
of  this  question  cannot  be  based  alone  on  the  events 
of  the  year  1807,  but  must  cover  the  whole  policy  of 
the  administration.  No  mortal  man,  with  the  pos 
sible  exception  of  Napoleon  Bonaparte,  could  have 
foreseen,  in  the  quiet  year  of  the  Peace  of  Amiens, 
the  events  of  Austerlitz  and  Jena,  of  Friedland  and 
Tilsit.  When  Jefferson  entered  the  presidency  we 


THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  NEUTRALITY    273 

were,  for  the  first  time  since  the  declaration  of  our 
independence,  not  only  on  terms  of  formal  peace, 
but  also  apparently  on  the  way  to  lasting  friendship 
with  the  European  nations.  It  looked  as  though 
our  days  of  tribulation  were  over.  Except  for  the 
trivial  war  with  the  Barbary  pirates,  there  was  not 
a  cloud  in  the  sky.  Jefferson  entered  on  his  policy 
of  disarmament  not  as  a  wilful  and  capricious  ex 
periment,  but  with  the  cordial  support  of  the  best 
minds  of  his  party,  of  Madison  and  Gallatin,  of 
Randolph,  Macon,  and  Giles.  The  success  of  that 
policy,  until  the  great  storm  burst  in  Europe,  is  re 
corded  in  the  treasury  reports  of  Albert  Gallatin. 
When  the  storm  burst,  it  is  true,  neither  our  wealth 
nor  our  good  intentions  nor  our  fancied  isolation 
could  save  us  from  being  drawn  into  it.  We  were 
unprepared  for  war,  and  we  were  obliged  to  endure 
humiliation.  But  it  still  remains  for  those  who 
have  castigated  and  ridiculed  Thomas  Jefferson  as 
the  author  of  our  misfortunes  to  prove  that  we 
should  have  been  "prepared'7  to  compel  justice 
from  the  victors  of  Trafalgar  and  Friedland,  even 
if  every  dollar  that  Gallatin  applied  to  the  reduc 
tion  of  our  debt  had  been  spent  in  building  frigates. 
Not  only  would  England  "have  fought  us  as  readily 
in  1807  as  in  1812"  (as  the  acrimonious  Morse  con 
fesses),  but  she  would  have  fought  us  with  far 
greater  vigor  and  freshness.  She  would  have  fought 
us  with  the  ruthlessness  of  Gambier  at  Copenhagen. 


274  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

For  she  would  then  have  been  fighting  for  her  very 
life,  and  as  the  war  progressed  the  news  of  Napo 
leon's  crowning  audacities,  of  Bayonne  and  Erfurt, 
of  Savona  and  Schonbrunn,  would  have  spurred 
her  to  far  other  efforts  than  did  the  actual  reports, 
a  few  years  later,  of  the  disintegration  of  the  "Grand 
Army"  amid  the  snows  of  Russia,  the  hasty  evacua 
tion  of  German  soil  by  Napoleon  after  the  "  Battle 
of  the  Nations"  at  Leipzig,  and  the  victorious 
march  of  Wellesley  through  the  Peninsula.  It  was 
a  blessing  for  us  that  our  second  war  with  England 
was  begun  in  1812  and  not  in  1807.  If  we  could 
not  prevent  or  avoid  the  storm,  it  was  infinitely  bet 
ter  that  we  suffered  only  its  nearly  spent  fury. 

It  is  as  easy  for  the  modern  critic  to  harp  on  Jef 
ferson's  "timidity,"  "vacillation,"  and  "culpable 
negligence"  in  this  great  crisis  of  world  history,  as  it 
was  for  John  Randolph  to  sneer  at  Madison's  expo 
sition  of  England's  depredations  on  our  commerce 
as  "a  shilling  pamphlet  matched  against  800  ships 
of  war."  But  neither  John  Randolph  nor  the  mod 
ern  critic  would  have  had  us  build  eight  hundred 
or  even  eighty  ships  of  war  to  match  Great  Britain's. 
Jefferson  saw  clearly  in  1807  what  all  the  world 
saw  in  1815,  that  our  difficulties  with  England  and 
France  were  only  "consequential  to  the  great  strug 
gle  between  those  nations."  He  sought,  like  an 
other  great  Democratic  President  in  our  own  day, 
to  preserve  our  neutrality  on  the  basis  of  the  ex- 


THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  NEUTRALITY/  275     ) 

pectation  of  equal  justice  from  both  belligerents. 
He  hoped  to  bide  out  the  storm  by  patience.  He 
wanted  to  remove  the  causes  of  friction  between 
the  United  States  and  the  warring  countries  of 
Europe,  even  at  the  expense  of  some  inconvenience 
and  loss  to  ourselves.  "Till  they  return  to  some 
sense  of  moral  duty/'  he  wrote  to  John  Taylor,  of 
Carolina,  in  January,  1808,  "we  keep  within  our 
selves.  This  gives  time.  Time  may  produce  peace 
in  Europe.  Peace  in  Europe  removes  all  causes  of 
difficulty."  The  result  of  his  policy  was  not  war, 
but  rather  the  postponement  of  the  war  for  five 
years.  He  could  have  accomplished  his  purpose  as 
well,  however,  if  he  had  not  put  on  the  lion's  skin 
to  frighten  Canning  and  Napoleon  Bonaparte ! 

On  December  18,  1807,  Jefferson,  already  unoffi 
cially  informed  of  the  British  orders  of  November 
11,  asked  Congress  in  a  brief  message  to  "inhibit 
the  departure  of  our  vessels  from  the  ports  of  the 
United  States."  In  four  days  the  Embargo  Act, 
forbidding  the  exportation  of  goods  from  the  United 
States  to  foreign  nations  by  land  or  sea,  passed  both 
Houses  of  Congress  by  large  majorities.  The  em 
bargo  was  a  revival  of  the  policy  of  1774  and  1794, 
when  we  sought  to  discipline  England  into  respect 
for  our  commercial  rights  by  proscribing  her  valuable 
trade.  But,  of  course,  the  embargo  was  a  double- 
edged  weapon.  For  every  bushel  of  wheat  and  bale 
of  cotton  that  we  refused  to  send  across  the  Atlan- 


276  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

tic,  for  every  consignment  of  meat  and  flour  that 
was  stopped  at  the  Canadian  border,  we  had  to 
deny  ourselves  an  equal  value  in  the  imported  com 
forts  and  luxuries  of  life  which,  with  our  growing 
wealth  and  population,  were  becoming  more  of  a 
necessity  each  year.  Every  vessel  tied  to  the  wharf 
meant  the  loss  of  freight  fees  which  the  European 
war  had  raised  to  such  a  point  that  one  successful 
voyage  out  of  three  meant  a  profit  to  the  carrier. 
Even  in  the  " simple  colonial  days"  of  1774,  in  spite 
of  the  fervor  of  our  Revolutionary  protest,  it  had 
been  almost  impossible  to  enforce  the  non-importa 
tion  agreement.  How  long,  then,  would  our  coun 
try  acquiesce  in  the  complete  suspension  of  a  foreign 
trade  which  by  the  year  1808  had  reached  an  annual 
volume  of  fifty  million  dollars?  William  Pinkney, 
our  minister  at  London,  put  his  finger  on  the  spot 
when  he  wrote  home  to  Madison  in  the  summer  of 
1808:  "The  Embargo  and  the  loss  of  our  trade  are 
deeply  felt  here,  and  will  be  felt  with  more  severity 
every  day  .  .  .  but  our  measures  .  .  .  have  not 
been  decisive,  because  we  have  not  been  thought  capa 
ble  of  persevering  in  self-denial,  which  is  no  more  than 
prudent  abstinence  from  destruction  and  dishonor. " 
The  authorities  in  England  naturally  did  every 
thing  in  their  power  to  defeat  the  embargo.  They 
tempted  American  ships  to  sail  for  their  ports  by 
suspending  the  navigation  acts  in  their  favor  and 
issuing  licenses  for  them  to  trade  with  the  forbidden 
ports  of  the  continent.  They  had  ample  cause  to 


THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  NEUTRALITY    277 

anticipate  the  failure  of  the  embargo  through  the 
reports  of  political  disaffection  in  America,  which 
was  stimulating  and  supplementing  the  strong  mo 
tives  of  economic  interest.  The  "Federal  mon 
archists"  of  New  England  and  New  York,  with 
Timothy  Pickering  at  their  head,  were  pursuing  a 
course  little  short  of  downright  treason  to  accom 
plish  the  discomfiture  of  Jefferson.  They  declared 
that  the  embargo  was  laid  at  the  behest  of  Napo 
leon.  Pickering  wrote  to  Canning's  special  envoy, 
Rose:  "The  interests  of  the  United  States  are  in 
terwoven  with  those  of  Great  Britian  and  our  safety 
depends  on  hers."  He  threatened  the  secession  of 
New  England  in  a  letter  to  James  Sullivan,  the  Re 
publican  governor  of  Massachusetts,  declaring  that 
"the  States  whose  farms  are  on  the  ocean  and  whose 
harvests  are  gathered  in  every  sea,"  must  "seriously 
consider"  how  to  preserve  their  interests.  "Every 
man  in  New  England,"  reported  the  British  agent, 
Henry,  to  Governor  Craig  of  Canada,  "is  opposed 
to  war  and  attached  to  the  course  of  England.1 

1  Another  agent  of  the  British  Government,  John  Howe,  reported 
from  Boston  to  the  lieu^fciant-governor  of  Halifax,  May  5,  1808: 
"They  [the  New  Englanders]  appear  to  blame  their  own  govern 
ment  more  than  ours.  .  .  .  The  irritation  against  Great  Britain  is 
fast  wearing  off.  ...  They  feel  how  necessary  her  friendship  is  to 
their  prosperity."  And  from  New  York  he  wrote,  speaking  of  the 
sentiment  in  Connecticut:  "Here  they  speak  on  the  subject  with  a 
degree  of  boldness  that  astonished  me,  and  many  of  them  even 
publicly  lamenting  that  ever  they  were  separated  from  Great 
Britain."  Howe  thought  the  administration  would  declare  war 
against  England  in  order  to  prevent  the  secession  of  New  England. 
Professor  Channing  called  the  letters  that  Rose  carried  home  with 
him  from  the  Federalists  "unpatriotic  and  treasonable." 


278  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

The  embargo  was  violated  openly  in  the  Northern 
States,  in  spite  of  a  strict  enforcing  act  to  control 
even  the  coastwise  trade,  and  the  patrol  of  the 
Canadian  border  by  armed  troops. 

Jefferson's  embarrassment  was  painful.  Not  only 
did  he  have  to  endure  the  slanders  of  his  political 
enemies,  who  charged  him  with  the  deliberate  ruin 
of  his  country's  prosperity,1  but  he  had  to  bear  the 

1  The  violence  of  the  attack  on  Jefferson  may  be  measured  by  the 
following  lines  from  William  Cullen  Bryant's  poem,  called  The 
Embargo.  Bryant  was  fourteen  years  old  when  the  poem  was 
written,  in  1808. 

"Curse  of  our  nation,  source  of  countless  woes, 
From  whose  dark  womb  unreckoned  misery  flows: 
Th'  embargo  rages,  like  a  sweeping  wing, 
Fear  lowers  before,  and  famine  stalks  behind. 

rAnd  thou,  the  scorn  of  every  patriot's  name, 
Thy  country's  ruin  and  her  council's  shame! 
Poor  servile  thing !     Derision  of  the  brave ! 
Who  erst  from  Tarleton  fled  to  Carter's  cave; 
Thou  who  when  menaced  by  perfidious  Gaul, 
Didst  prostrate  to  her  whiskered  minions  fall; 
And  when  our  cash  her  empty  bags  supplied  j 
Didst  meanly  strive  the  foul  disgrace  to  hide; 
Go,  wretch,  resign  the  presidential  chair, 
Disclose  thy  secret  measures,  foul  or  fair. 
Go,  search  with  curious  eyes  for  horned  frogs, 
'Mid  the  wild  waste  of  Louisianian  bogs; 
Or  where  Ohio  rolls  his  turbid  stream, 
Dig  for  huge  bones,  thy  glory  and  thy  theme. 

But  quit  to  abler  hands  the  helm  of  state 
Nor  image  ruin  on  thy  country's  fate.  .  .  ." 

And  so  on  for  over  five  hundred  lines.  Of  course,  as  Parton  says, 
"this  boy,  gifted  as  he  was,  could  only  be  the  melodious  echo  of  the 
talk  he  had  heard  in  his  native  village." 


THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  NEUTRALITY    279 

new  reproach  of  the  sacrifice  of  principles  which  he 
once  had  held  sacred  and  of  such  harmony  as  was 
left  in  his  distracted  party.  In  1794  he  had  pro 
tested  violently  against  the  use  of  the  militia  by 
the  President  to  put  down  the  Whiskey  Rebellion 
in  western  Pennsylvania.  But  when  the  embargo 
was  resisted  at  Oswego  in  the  summer  of  1808  he  ad 
vised  Governor  Tompkins,  of  New  York,  to  march 
against  the  rebels:  "I  think  it  so  important  to  crush 
these  audacious  proceedings  and  to  make  the  offend 
ers  feel  the  consequences  of  individuals  daring  to 
oppose  a  law  by  force,  that  no  effort  should  be 
spared  to  compass  this  object."  His  cabinet,  a 
model  of  harmony  till  now,  divided  on  the  question 
of  maintaining  the  embargo.  "Most  fervently 
ought  we  to  pray,"  wrote  Robert  Smith  to  Gallatin, 
in  August,  1808,  "to  be  relieved  from  the  various 
embarrassments  of  said  Embargo."  A  Republican 
governor  of  Massachusetts  at  one  end  of  the  coun 
try,  and  a  Republican  justice  of  the  supreme  court 
from  Charleston  at  the  other  end  of  the  country, 
condemned  the  measure.  The  Federalist  Justice 
Story  declared  that  the  embargo  "went  to  the  ut 
most  limit  of  constructive  power  under  the  Consti 
tution."  This  was  the  kind  of  indorsement  with 
which  the  author  of  the  Kentucky  Resolutions  was 
ending  his  administration. 

Jefferson  had  decided  in  1805  not  to  accept  a 
third  term.    Like  Jackson  and  Roosevelt  after  him, 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

he  selected  a  member  of  his  cabinet  for  a  successor, 
and  easily  commended  him  to  the  party  by  the 
weight  of  his  own  influence.  James  Madison  was 
nominated  by  eighty-three  out  of  eighty-nine  votes 
in  a  Congressional  caucus  convened  in  January, 
1808.  The  anti-administration  Republicans  of  the 
South  favored  James  Monroe,  whom  John  Randolph 
had  been  "  grooming "  for  the  presidency  ever  since 
his  return  from  the  English  mission  in  1806;  while 
the  disaffected  Republicans  of  New  York  supported 
the  candidacy  of  Vice-President  Clinton.  C.  C. 
Pinckney  and  Rufus  King  were  again  the  Federalist 
candidates.  All  of  New  England,  except  Vermont, 
reverted  to  the  Federalist  column,  but  still  Madison 
carried  the  country  by  one  hundred  and  twenty-two 
votes  to  forty-seven  for  Pinckney  and  six  for  Clin 
ton.  In  his  farewell  message  to  Congress,  in  No 
vember,  1808,  Jefferson  praised  the  embargo  as 
having  frustrated  the  outrages  "which  meant  war 
if  resisted  and  the  sacrifice  of  the  vital  principle  of 
our  national  independence  if  submitted  to."  The 
House  voted  to  maintain  the  embargo  by  the  large 
majority  of  ninety-six  to  twenty-six.  But  with  the 
attempt  to  apply  the  severe  Enforcing  Act  of  Janu 
ary  9,  1809,  resistance  became  so  wide-spread  and 
desperate  that  Congress  raised  the  general  embargo 
and  substituted  therefor  a  Non-Intercourse  Act 
with  Great  Britain  and  France.  It  was  the  begin 
ning  of  the  end  of  Jefferson's  policy  of  "peaceful 


THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  NEUTRALITY    281 

coercion."  Unwilling  to  commit  his  successor  to 
the  battle  which  he  could  not  win  himself,  Jefferson 
signed  the  act  on  March  1,  1809,  and  three  days 
later  returned  to  private  life. 

The  administration  of  Thomas  Jefferson  was  a 
notable  period  in  the  development  of  the  American 
nation.  When  he  came  to  the  presidency  in  1801 
our  domain  was  bounded  on  the  west  by  the  Missis 
sippi  River,  we  touched  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  at  no 
point,  no  white -man  had  crossed  the  continent,  and 
but  few  were  familiar  with  the  shores  of  Lakes 
Michigan,  Huron,  and  Superior.  -When  he  left  the 
presidency  eight  years  later  the  limits  of  the  United 
States  were  the  Rockies,  the  mouth  of  the  Missis 
sippi  was  ours,  Lewis  and  Clark  had  penetrated  the 
wilderness  to  the  Pacific  coast,  and  John  Jacob 
Astor  was  planning  his  fur-posts  on  the  Columbia 
River.  Our  population  had  grown  from  five  mil 
lion  to  seven  million  two  hundred  and  fifty  thou 
sand,  and  was  rapidly  filling  in  the  land  between 
the  Alleghanies  and  the  Mississippi.  Ohio,  ad 
mitted  as  a  State  in  1802,  with  some  fifty-five  thou 
sand  inhabitants,  counted  two  hundred  and  thirty 
thousand  in  1810.  Kentucky  had  grown  from  two 
hundred  and  twenty  thousand  to  four  hundred  and 
six  thousand,  Tennessee  from  one  hundred  and  five 
thousand  to  two  hundred  and  sixty-one  thousand, 
the  Mississippi  Territory  from  eight  thousand  to 
forty-one  thousand.  Our  trade  down  the  great 


282  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

river,  now  wholly  American  from  source  to  mouth, 
more  than  doubled  during  Jefferson's  second  term, 
reaching  a  figure  in  1809  which  foretold  the  day,  not 
distant,  when  forty  per  cent  of  the  foreign  com 
merce  of  the  United  States  should  pass  through  the 
port  of  New  Orleans.  In  the  year  before  the  Em 
bargo  Act  took  effect  our  exports  and  imports 
reached  the  considerable  sum  of  one  hundred  and 
eight  million  dollars  and  one  hundred  and  thirty- 
eight  million  dollars  respectively — a  total  volume 
of  trade  not  to  be  reached  again  until  the  year  1835.  * 
Jefferson's  mind  expanded  with  the  country.  His 
political  philosophy  broadened  and  his  constitu 
tional  straitness  was  relaxed.  Little  by  little  the 
cautious  responsibility  with  which  he  wished  to 
see  the  executive  circumscribed  had  yielded  to  the 
splendid  opportunities  for  the  exercise  of  power 
which  the  possession  of  high  office  brought.  Before 
the  close  of  his  term  he  spoke  and  acted  like  a  na 
tionalist  of  the  Federalist  school.  The  erstwhile  en 
emy  of  an  industrial  economy  with  its  large  cities 
and  its  thousands  of  "artificers,"  "the  panderers  of 
vice  and  the  instruments  by  which  the  liberties  of 

1  The  Embargo  and  Non-Intercourse  Acts  suddenly  reduced  ex 
ports  to  $22,000,000  and  imports  to  $56,000,000  in  1808,  and 
$52,000,000  and  $59,000,000  respectively  in  1809,  which  was  far 
from  a  "total  annihilation"  of  our  commerce.  The  nadir  was 
reached  in  the  War  of  1812,  when  our  exports  sank  to  $6,000,000 
and  our  imports  to  $12,000,000  in  the  year  1814.  From  the  con 
clusion  of  peace  the  recovery  was  steady,  except  in  the  panic  year 
of  1819. 


THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  NEUTRALITY    283 

a  country  are  overthrown,"  spoke  sympathetically 
in  his  last  message  to  Congress,  in  November,  1808, 
of  the  considerable  investments  of  capital  in  indus 
tries  destined  to  become  permanent  under  the  aus 
pices  of  cheaper  materials  and  subsistence,  of  the 
freedom  of  labor  from  taxation,  and  of  protecting 
duties  ( ! )  and  prohibitions.  The  erstwhile  guardian 
of  the  "general  government"  within  the  limits  defi 
nitely  traced  by  the  clauses  of  the  Constitution,  now 
suggested  that  Congress  might  appropriate  the  sur 
plus  of  its  revenues  "to  the  improvement  of  roads, 
canals,  rivers,  education,  and  other  great  founda 
tions  of  prosperity  and  union."  But  through  all 
the  phases  of  political  development,  amid  the  vari 
ous  vicissitudes  of  public  and  private  fortune,  in 
office  or  out  of  office,  from  his  mature  youth  to  his 
vigorous  old  age,  there  was  one  principle,  sacred  as 
a  revelation  frotfi  on  high,  from  which  Jefferson 
never  swerved^He  was  convinced  that  the  land  of 
America,  with  all  its  material  resources,  belonged  in 
full,  undelegated  possession  to  the  successive  gen 
erations  of  living  men;  that  their  rulers  were  but 
their  honored  servants,  their  laws  the  changing 
record  of  their  evolving  will,  and  their  institutions 
the  temporary  form  in  which  the  travailing  spirit 
of  freedom  was  dothed.  Thomas  Jefferson  believed 
in  democracy.  ~£f^ 

Jefferson  retired  from  the  presidency  under  the 
shadow  of  the  defeat  of  his  long-cherished  policy  of 


284  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

"peaceful  coercion. "  On  the  eve  of  his  departure 
from  Washington  he  set  his  signature  to  the  first 
and  only  important  bill  that  Congress  passed 
against  his  wishes  during  the  eight  years  of  his 
presidency.  Still,  when  the  great  democrat  took 
his  quiet  way  to  Monticello,  men  forgot  the  present 
discomfiture  and  remembered  only  the  long  service 
of  forty  years  continuous  devotion  to  his  country. 
Congratulatory  addresses  poured  in  upon  him  from 
all  sides.  The  memorial  of  his  native  State  was 
particularly  eloquent  and  touching.  It  reviewed 
the  accomplishments  of  the  administration,  the 
pomp  and  state  laid  aside,  the  patronage  discarded, 
the  internal  taxes  abolished,  the  debt  discharged, 
the  pirates  of  the  Mediterranean  chastised,  the 
national  domain  vastly  increased.  It  recalled  the 
peace  with  the  civilized  world,  preserved  through  a 
season  of  uncommon  difficulty  and  trial,  the  good 
will  cultivated  with  the  unfortunate  aborigines  of 
our  country  and  the  civilization  humanely  extended 
among  them,"  and  "that  theme  which  above  all 
others  the  historic  genius  will  hang  upon  with  rap 
ture,  the  liberty  of  speech  and  the  press  preserved 
inviolate,  without  which  genius  and  science  are 
given  to  men  in  vain." 

"From  the  first  brilliant  and  happy  moment  of 
your  resistance  to  foreign  tyranny,"  the  address 
concludes,  "to  the  present  day,  we  mark  with  plea 
sure  and  with  gratitude  the  same  uniform  and  con- 


THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  NEUTRALITY    285 

sistent  character — the  same  warm  and  devoted  at 
tachment  to  liberty  and  the  Republic,  the  same 
Roman  love  of  your  country,  her  rights,  her  peace, 
her  honor,  her  prosperity.  How  blessed  will  be  the 
retirement  into  which  you  are  about  to  go!  How 
deservedly  blessed  it  will  be !  For  you  carry  with 
you  the  richest  of  all  rewards,  the  recollection  of  a 
life  well  spent  in  the  service  of  your  country,  and 
proofs  the  most  decisive  of  the  love,  the  gratitude, 
the  veneration  of  your  countrymen." 


CHAPTER  X 
JEFFERSON  IN  RETIREMENT 

I  have  sworn  upon  the  altar  of  God  eternal  hostility  against  every 
form  of  tyranny  over  the  mind  of  man.  (Jefferson  to  Benjamin  Rush, 
September  23,  1800.) 

SEVENTEEN  years  of  life  were  left  to  Thomas  Jef 
ferson  after  his  retirement  from  the  presidency, 
years  filled  with  the  multifarious  activities  of  a 
mind  which  never  lost  the  zest  of  curiosity  or  the 
fine  edge  of  intellectual  discrimination.  The  quiet 
pursuits  which  he  had  often  longed  for  amid  the 
cares  of  public  office  were  now  his  to  enjoy  to  the 
full.  He  revelled  in  his  books,  his  family,  his  acres, 
his  buildings,  his  gardens,  his  undisturbed  morn 
ings  of  study,  his  relaxed  hours  of  genial  intercourse 
with  a  host  of  devoted  friends  and  welcome  guests. 
On  quitting  office,  Jefferson  had  taken  the  lauda 
ble  resolution  not  to  act  the  role  of  "the  power 
behind  the  throne."  He  published  a  circular  letter 
in  March,  1809,  declaring  that  he  "  would  never 
interpose  in  any  case  with  the  President  or  the 
heads  of  departments  in  any  application  whatever 
for  office."  He  insisted  that  he  had  no  remotest 
wish  to  dictate  the  policy  of  his  successors  in  the 
presidential  office.  He  had  "taken  final  leave  of 

286 


JEFFERSON  IN  RETIREMENT       287 

politics."  Having  "gladly  laid  down  the  distress 
ing  burthen  of  power/'  he  had  "exchanged  the 
newspapers  for  Tacitus  and  Thucydides,  for  Newton 
and  Euclid."  "The  swaggering  on  deck  as  a  pas 
senger/'  he  playfully  wrote  to  his  son-in-law,  John 
Eppes,  in  1813,  "is  so  much  more  pleasant  than 
climbing  the  ropes  as  a  seaman" — and  much  more 
in  the  same  vein. 

But  in  this  matter  Jefferson  yielded  somewhat  to 
a  besetting  temptation  of  his  nature,  namely,  that 
of  self-deception  through  the  fervor  of  his  own  pro 
testations.  He  was  far  too  active  a  man  and  far 
too  thoroughly  identified  with  the  life  of  the  Re 
publican  party  and  solicitous  of  its  fortunes  to  ab 
jure  politics  during  the  exciting  days  of  the  War  of 
1812,  and  the  uncertain  days  of  national  reconstruc 
tion  which  followed.  Especially  when  the  chief 
magistracy  was  held  for  sixteen  of  the  seventeen 
years  of  his  retirement  by  two  of  his  closest  friends 
and  political  lieutenants.  Presidents  Madison  and 
Monroe  consulted  the  oracle  of  Monticello  on  every 
important  crisis  of  their  administrations.  Their 
published  correspondence  with  Jefferson  contains 
only  a  partial  record  of  their  indebtedness  to  him, 
for  they  frequently  made  the  pilgrimage  in  person 
to  Monticello  for  long  and  intimate  conferences. 

A  striking  example  of  the  influence  he  exerted  on 
the  administration  at  Washington  is  furnished  by  a 
letter  which  he  wrote  on  October  24,  1823,  in  his 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

eighty-first  year,  to  President  Monroe,  in  answer 
to  the  latter's  request  for  his  opinion  on  Canning's 
proposal  of  joint  action  between  Great  Britain  and 
the  United  States  to  warn  the  Holy  Alliance  to 
keep  its  hands  off  the  western  hemisphere.  The 
letter  was  written  six  weeks  before  the  President 
announced  his  famous  Monroe  Doctrine  to  Con 
gress.  It  reads:  "Our  first  and  fundamental  maxim 
should  be  never  to  entangle  ourselves  in  the  broils 
of  Europe.  Our  second,  never  to  suffer  Europe  to 
meddle  with  cis- Atlantic  affairs.  America,  north 
and  south,  has  a  set  of  interests  distinct  from  those 
of  Europe  and  peculiarly  her  own.  ...  I  could 
honestly,  therefore,  join  in  the  declaration  .  .  . 
that  we  will  oppose  with  all  our  means  the  forcible 
interposition  of  any  other  power,  as  auxiliary,  sti 
pendiary,  or  under  any  other  form  or  pretext,  and 
most  especially  their  [the  former  colonies  of  Spain 
in  the  western  hemisphere]  transfer  to  any  power 
by  conquest,  coercion,  or  acquisition  in  any  other 
way."  Monroe  put  these  ideas  into  his  message  of 
December  2,  1823. 

Jefferson's  political  prognostications,  however, 
were  not  always  right,  nor  his  judgments  always 
sound.  He  was  curiously  mistaken  in  his  prophecy 
of  the  course  of  the  War  of  1812,  when  he  wrote  to  his 
old  friend,  General  Kosciusko,  June  28,  1812:  "Our 
present  enemy  will  have  the  sea  to  herself,  while  we 
shall  be  equally  predominant  at  land,  and  shall 


JEFFERSON  IN  RETIREMENT       289 

strip  her  of  all  her  possessions  on  this  continent." 
Great  Britain  did  not  have  the  sea  to  herself,  and 
Detroit,  Bladensburg,  and  Sackett's  Harbor  are  a 
sufficient  commentary  on  our  "predominance  at 
land."  The  easy  optimism  with  which  the  Southern 
statesmen,  from  the  knightly  young  Clay  to  the 
venerable  Jefferson,  assumed  a  rapid  and  jaunty 
conquest  of  Canada  by  our  militia,  is  still  a  matter 
of  wonder  to  the  historian.  "The  acquisition  of 
Canada  this  year  as  far  as  the  neighborhood  of 
Quebec,"  wrote  Jefferson  to  Duane,  in  August,  1812, 
"will  be  a  mere  matter  of  marching,  and  will  give 
us  experience  for  the  attack  of  Halifax  the  next  and 
the  final  expulsion  of  England  from  the  American 
continent."  Jefferson  didn't  go  quite  to  the  length 
that  Clay  did,  however,  in  declaring  that  the  con 
quest  of  Canada  'could  be  accomplished  by  a  thou 
sand  Kentucky  riflemen ! 

On  the  whole,  it  seems  as  though  Jefferson  in  his 
later  years  reverted  to  the  particularistic  theories 
of  government  from  which  he  had  grown  away  dur 
ing  his  tenure  of  office.  The  Hartford  Convention, 
the  nationalist  tendencies  in  the  increase  of  the 
army,  the  raising  of  the  tariff,  the  re-establishment 
of  the  bank,  the  movement  for  internal  improve 
ments  at  national  expense,  revived  his  apprehension 
of  the  renaissance  of  Federalism.  Perhaps,  too,  in 
the  reminiscences  of  his  earlier  days  of  jealous  com 
bat  against  the  centralizing  tendencies  of  Alexander 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

Hamilton,  and  in  the  ordering  and  editing  of  those 
random  notes  which  he  had  jotted  down  during  his 
official  career  in  Philadelphia  and  Washington — the 
famous  and  regrettable  Anas — he  experienced  a 
fresh  realization  of  the  dangers  of  Federal  usurpa 
tion.  Nor  could  he  have  been  indifferent  to  the 
rapid  growth  of  the  power  of  the  Federal  judiciary 
at  the  expense  of  States'  rights  in  the  successive  de 
cisions  of  the  supreme  court  under  the  influence  of 
Chief  Justice  Marshall,  or  to  the  appearance  of 
Marshall's  elaborate  Life  of  Washington  (1805), 
which  gave  a  powerful  Federalist  interpretation  of 
our  government  in  its  inaugural  years.  His  purpose 
in  publishing  the  Anas  was  chiefly  to  counteract  the 
influence  of  Marshall's  book,  and  he  appealed  to 
Madison  and  the  younger  men  of  the  Republican 
party  to  take  care  that  the  people  of  the  country 
should  not  be  left  without  an  adequate  apologetic 
for  Republican  principles  and  policies.  He  feared 
that  the  Republican  party,  under  its  new  and  en 
thusiastic  leaders,  like  Calhoun,  Porter,  Cheves,  and 
Clay,  might  drift  from  the  true  course. 

It  is  undoubtedly  to  this  renewed  fidelity  to  the 
doctrines  of  particularism  and  States'  rights  that  we 
must  attribute  Jefferson's  disappointing  and  reac 
tionary  attitude  on  the  Missouri  question.  No  man 
in  America  had  championed  the  cause  of  negro 
emancipation  with  more  consistency  and  vigor  than 
Thomas  Jefferson.  From  his  entrance  into  the  Vir- 


JEFFERSON  IN  RETIREMENT       291 

ginia  House  of  Burgesses  in  1769  to  his  retirement 
from  the  presidency,  forty  years  later,  his  every 
public  utterance  and  private  opinion  on  the  subject 
of  slavery  had  been  in  favor  of  abolition.  In  the 
first  draft  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence  he 
had  made  the  encouragement  of  the  slave-trade 
one  of  the  heads  of  indictment  against  George  III. 
Chosen  with  Wythe  and  Pendleton  to  revise  the 
Virginia  law  code  in  1779,  he  prepared  an  amend 
ment  emancipating  all  slaves  born  in  the  State  after 
the  passing  of  the  act,  and  providing  for  their  being 
educated  in  farming  and  the  mechanical  arts  at 
public  expense  until  they  came  of  age,  and  then 
being  colonized  to  some  suitable  place,  supplied 
with  arms,  household  implements,  tools,  seeds,  do 
mestic  animals,  and  kept  under  the  "  alliance  and 
protection "  of  the  State  until  they  should  be  nu 
merous  and  strong  enough  to  protect  themselves. 
Shortly  after  his  futile  attempt  to  get  emancipa 
tion  written  into  the  revised  Virginia  law  code,  Jef 
ferson  composed  his  Notes  on  Virginia  (published  in 
Paris,  in  1784),  in  which  he  deplored  the  evil  effects 
of  slavery  on  the  manners  and  morals  of  the  com 
munity.  "The  whole  commerce  between  master 
and  slave,"  he  wrote,  "is  a  perpetual  exercise  of  the 
most  boisterous  passions,  the  most  unremitting  des 
potism  on  the  one  part  and  degrading  submission 
on  the  other.  Our  children  see  this  and  learn  to 
imitate  it.  And  can  the  liberties  of  a  nation 


292  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

be  thought  secure  when  we  have  removed  their  only 
firm  basis,  a  conviction  in  the  minds  of  the  people 
that  those  liberties  are  the  gift  of  God;  that  they 
are  not  to  be  violated  but  with  his  wrath?  Indeed, 
I  tremble  for  my  country  when  I  reflect  that  God  is 
just,  that  his  justice  cannot  sleep  forever." 

In  the  same  year  that  he  published  the  Notes  on 
Virginia,  Jefferson  introduced  into  a  bill  in  Congress 
a  clause  excluding  slavery  from  the  whole  of  the  ter 
ritory  of  the  United  States  between  the  Alleghanies 
and  the  Mississippi,  south  as  well  as  north  of  the 
Ohio.  The  clause  was  lost  by  the  vote  of  a  single 
State  only. 

Probably,  finally,  no  single  act  of  Jefferson's 
presidency  gave  him  more  personal  satisfaction  than 
his  opportunity  of  reminding  the  Houses  of  Con 
gress,  in  his  message  of  1806,  that  the  time  was  ap 
proaching  when,  by  the  expiration  of  the  twenty- 
year  limit  set  by  the  Constitution,  they  might  pass 
a  law  putting  an  end  to  the  slave-trade,  and  with  it 
to  those  "violations  of  human  rights  which  have 
been  so  long  continued  on  the  unoffending  inhabi 
tants  of  Africa,  and  which  the  morality,  the  repu 
tation,  and  the  best  interests  of  our  country  have 
long  been  eager  to  proscribe."  Jefferson  renewed 
his  devotion  to  the  cause  of  emancipation  in  a  letter 
to  Edward  Coles,  in  the  autumn  of  1814,  reiterating 
his  faith  in  the  scheme  of  colonization,  and  deploring 
the  fact  that  the  younger  generation,  in  whose  own 


JEFFERSON  IN  RETIREMENT       293 

breast  the  flame  of  liberty  had  been  kindled,  were 
not  more  eager  to  extend  the  process  to  their  negro 
brethren.  For  himself,  he  said,  the  time  for  action 
was  past.  Old  Priam  could  not  buckle  on  the 
armor  of  Hector.  The  enterprise  of  emancipation 
was  for  the  young.  ...  "It  shall  have  all  my 
prayers — the  only  weapons  of  an  old  man." 

What  more  natural  than  to  expect  a  man  with 
such  a  record  in  word  and  deed  in  behalf  of  emanci 
pation  to  hail  with  joy  and  support  with  ardor  the 
efforts  of  the  "restrictionists"  in  the  Congress  of 
1819-20  to  exclude  slavery  from  the  proposed  new 
State  of  Missouri  and  the  remaining  part  of  the 
Louisiana  Purchase  territory  ?  It  was  the  first  move 
ment  to  stop  the  spread  of  slavery  west  of  the  Missis 
sippi,  as  his  own  bill  of  1784  had  been  the  first  move 
ment  to  stop  the  spread  of  slavery  west  of  the  Alle- 
ghanies.  Tallmadge's  proposal  that  no  more  slaves  be 
allowed  to  go  into  Missouri  was  like  his  own  measure 
in  the  House  of  Burgesses  many  years  before  to  de 
clare  free  after  one  year  any  negro  slave  brought  into 
the  State  of  Virginia.  The  provision  that  negroes 
born  in  the  State  of  Missouri  should  become  free  at 
the  age  of  twenty-five  was  less  radical  than  his  own 
proposition  of  1779  for  Virginia  that  all  children 
born  of  slaves  should  be  free  from  their  birth  and 
should  be  placed  under  the  tutelage  of  the  State 
until  old  enough  for  colonization.  Yet,  in  spite  of 
all  this,  Jefferson  opposed  the  imposition  of  any 


294  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

restriction  regarding  slavery  upon  Missouri  by  Con 
gress  as  a  condition  of  its  admission  as  a  State  into 
the  Union,  and  condemned  the  famous  Compromise 
which  forbade  the  extension  of  slavery  into  the  rest 
of  the  territory  of  the  Louisiana  Purchase  above 
the  parallel  of  36°  30'. 

In  this  matter  Jefferson's  abhorrence  of  the  re 
vival  of  Federalism  got  the  better  of  his  hatred  for 
slavery.  He  could  see  in  the  policy  of  the  restric- 
tionist  only  a  ruse  to  restore  the  prestige  of  the 
northern  champions  of  a  consolidated  government. 
He  who  once  in  his  horror  of  slavery  had  "  trembled 
for  his  country,"  now  found  the  impassioned  pleas 
of  Taylor,  Slade,  Tallmadge,  and  King  for  a  race  of 
freemen  in  our  new  West  only  hypocrisy  and  guile. 
"The  Missouri  question/7  he  wrote  to  William 
Pinkney,  "is  a  mere  party  trick.  The  leaders  of 
Federalism,  defeated  in  their  schemes  of  obtaining 
power  by  rallying  partisans  to  the  principle  of  mon- 
archism  .  .  .  have  changed  their  tack  and  thrown 
out  another  barrel  to  the  whale.  They  are  taking 
advantage  of  the  virtuous  feelings  of  the  people  to 
effect  a  division  of  parties  by  a  geographical  line. 
.  .  .  They  are  wasting  Jeremiads  on  the  miseries 
of  slavery,  as  if  we  were  advocates  for  it.  Sincerity 
in  their  declamations  should  direct  their  efforts  to 
the  true  point  of  the  difficulty,  and  unite  their  coun 
sels  with  ours  in  devising  some  reasonable  and  prac 
ticable  plan  of  getting  rid  of  it."  But  what  plan 
was  either  more  reasonable  or  more  practicable  at 


JEFFERSON  IN  RETIREMENT       295 

the  moment  for  getting  rid  of  slavery  than  to  pre 
vent  its  going  into  the  new  lands  west  of  the  Missis 
sippi,  Jefferson,  if  he  knew,  did  not  state.  Again  he 
wrote  to  Lafayette  in  France,  that  the  Missouri 
question  was  "not  a  moral  question,  but  merely 
one  of  power:  its  object  is  to  raise  a  geographical 
principle  for  the  choice  of  a  president,  and  the  noise 
will  be  kept  up  until  that  is  effected/'  And  again,  to 
General  Dearborn,  after  the  passage  of  the  compro 
mise:  "Desperate  of  regaining  their  power  under 
political  distinctions,  they  [the  Federalists]  have 
wriggled  into  its  seat  under  the  auspices  of  morality, 
and  are  again  in  the  ascendency  from  which  their 
sins  had  hurled  them."  So  the  man  whom  cynics 
ridiculed  for  his  idealism  in  politics  lost  the  moral 
point  of  the  Missouri  question  in  his  own  cynical 
attitude,  and  comforted  himself,  for  his  country, 
with  the  miserable  sophistry  that  the  extension  of 
slavery  into  the  new  West  would  lighten  the  dark 
cloud  by  dissipating  it,  and  for  his  person,  with  the 
dismal  thanksgiving  that  he  would  "not  live  to  see 
the  issue." 

Religious  obloquy,  which  had  pursued  Jefferson  all 
through  his  official  life,  did  not  cease  with  his  retire 
ment  or  even  with  his  burial.  He  was  accused  by  the 
orthodoxy  of  New  England  of  having  imported  the 
atheistical  doctrines  of  the  French  Jacobins  to  cor 
rupt  his  countrymen.  Ridiculous  stories  of  his  hos 
tility  to  Christianity  were  circulated,  even  to  the  ru 
mor  of  a  presidential  edict  to  suppress  all  copies  of 


296  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

the  Bible.  But  Jefferson  was  no  more  an  atheist 
than  he  was  a  Jacobin.  Whether  he  was  a  Christian 
or  not  depends  on  the  definition  of  a  word  which  has 
never  been  defined  alike  by  any  two  of  a  multitude  of 
sects.  The  Christianity  of  the  priesthood  and  the 
Christianity  of  dogma  he  equally  abhorred.  He  re 
jected  all  doctrines  which  offended  his  reason  or  his 
ethics:  the  Trinity,  predestination,  the  virgin  birth 
of  Christ,  apostolic  succession,  the  atonement,  mira 
cles,  et  cetera;  but  his  writings  abound  with  refer 
ences  to  a  Deity  in  whose  hands  are  the  issues  of 
human  affairs,  and  with  expressions  of  faith  in  a 
future  life  where  those  parted  on  earth  shall  meet 
again.  He  fought  strenuously  against  any  connec 
tion  between  church  and  state,  as  the  endowed  An 
glican  clergy  of  Virginia  experienced  to  their  sorrow; 
but  he  generally  followed  the  worship  and  accepted 
the  ministrations  of  the  Episcopal  Church,  while 
he  was  a  liberal  contributor  to  churches  of  many 
denominations  and  a  good  friend  to  hosts  of  clergy 
men.  He  rejected  the  doctrine  of  the  inspiration 
of  the  Bible;  but  he  knew  the  book  better  than  most 
of  his  critics,  and  compiled  with  considerable  labor 
a  kind  of  "harmony  of  the  Gospels/'  called  "The 
Jefferson  Bible,"  designed  to  cull  out  and  arrange  in 
order  the  essential  teachings  of  Jesus.1  It  is  prob- 

JHe  wrote  to  his  friend,  Charles  Thompson,  in  January,  1816: 
"I  have  made  a  wee  little  book  .  .  .  which  I  call  the  Philosophy  of 
Jesus.  It  is  a  paradigm  of  his  doctrines,  made  by  cutting  the  texts 
out  of  the  book  and  arranging  them  on  the  pages  of  a  blank-book,  in 


JEFFERSON  IN  RETIREMENT       297 

able  that  he  did  not  differ  essentially  from  Wash 
ington,  Adams,  or  Franklin  in  his  religious  opinions, 
except  that  he  was  far  more  interested  in  religion 
than  any  of  these.  It  is  difficult  to  imagine  a  rev 
erend  stranger  discussing  religion  for  hours  with  the 
grave  Washington  or  the  pompous  Adams  or  the 
canny  Franklin,  and  departing  under  the  impression 
that  he  had  been  conversing  with  a  trained  theolo 
gian.  But,  then,  these  men  were  not  "Jacobinical/' 
therefore  their  heterodoxy  was  not  dangerous.  It 
was  really  Jefferson's  political  opinions  that  were 
persecuted  in  the  New  England  pulpits  under  the 
head  of  "atheism  and  infidelity." 

Least  of  all  was  Jefferson  a  propagandist  in  relig 
ion.  He  never  attempted  to  make  a  convert  or 
wished  to  change  another's  creed.  So  sacredly  pri 
vate  a  matter  did  he  consider  the  individual's  rela 
tion  to  God  that  he  hesitated  to  communicate  his 
religious  ideas  even  to  his  own  family  and  intimate 
friends.  His  eldest  grandson  and  the  administrator 
of  his  estate,  Thomas  Jefferson  Randolph,  wrote  to 
his  biographer,  H.  S.  Randall,  in  1856:  "Of  his  relig- 

a  certain  order  of  time  and  subject.  A  more  beautiful  and  precious 
morsel  of  ethics  I  have  never  seen.  It  is  a  document  in  proof  that 
I  am  a  real  Christian,  i.  e.,  a  disciple  of  the  doctrines  of  Jesus,  very 
different  from  the  Platonists  who  call  me  infidel  and  themselves 
Christians  and  preachers  of  the  Gospel,  while  they  draw  all  their 
characteristic  dogmas  from  what  its  author  never  said  or  saw. 
They  have  compounded  from  the  heathen  mysteries  a  system  be 
yond  the  comprehension  of  man,  of  which  the  great  reformer  of 
the  vicious  ethics  and  deism  of  the  Jews,  were  he  to  return  to  earth, 
would  not  recognize  one  feature." 


298  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

ious  opinions  his  family  know  no  more  than  the 
world.  If  asked  by  any  one  of  them  his  opinion  on 
any  religious  subject  his  uniform  reply  was  that  it 
was  a  subject  each  was  bound  to  study  assiduously 
for  himself,  unbiassed  by  the  opinions  of  others 
.  .  .  that  after  a  thorough  investigation  they  were 
responsible  for  the  righteousness  not  the  rightfulness 
of  their  opinions."  At  the  same  time  he  was  patient 
and  courteous  with  those  who  tried  to  "convert" 
him  out  of  honest  solicitude  for  his  salvation.  "I 
must  ever  believe  that  religion  substantially  good," 
he  wrote  to  one  such  apostle  in  1814,  "which  pro 
duces  an  honest  life,  and  we  have  been  authorized 
by  One  whom  you  and  I  equally  respect,  to  judge  of 
the  tree  by  its  fruits.  .  .  .  Let  us  not  be  uneasy, 
then,  about  the  different  roads  we  may  pursue,  but 
following  the  guidance  of  a  good  conscience  let  us 
be  happy  in  the  hope  that  by  these  different  paths 
we  shall  all  meet  in  the  end.  ...  I  salute  you 
with  brotherly  esteem  and  respect." 

In  a  word,  Jefferson's  religion  was  a  system  of 
practical  ethics,  built,  as  he  believed,  on  the  teachings 
of  the  Nazarene  and  supplemented  by  a  deliberately 
undefined  faith  in  a  guiding  Providence  and  a  future 
state.  "I  have  never  permitted  myself,"  he  wrote 
to  that  rarest  type  of  friend,  a  New  England  clergy 
man,  "to  meditate  a  specific  creed.  These  formulas 
have  been  the  bane  and  ruin  of  the  Christian  church, 
its  own  fatal  invention."  In  the  midst  of  the  busy 


JEFFERSON  IN  RETIREMENT       299 

first  term  in  the  White  House,  Jefferson  found  time 
to  write  a  syllabus  of  the  doctrines  of  Jesus  com 
pared  with  the  moral  codes  of  the  Hebrews,  the 
Greeks,  and  the  Romans,  to  show  the  superiority  of 
the  Christian  ethics.  He  sent  the  syllabus  to  Ben 
jamin  Rush  with  the  comment:  "These  [views]  are 
the  result  of  a  life  of  inquiry  and  reflection,  and 
very  different  from  that  anti-Christian  system  im 
puted  to  me  by  those  who  know  nothing  of  my 
opinions.  To  the  corruptions  of  Christianity  I  am 
indeed  opposed,1  but  not  to  the  genuine  precepts  of 
Jesus  himself.  I  am  a  Christian  in  the  only  sense 
he  wished  any  one  to  be;  sincerely  attached  to  his 
doctrines  in  preference  to  all  others,  ascribing  to 
him  every  human  excellence,  and  believing  he  never 
claimed  any  other."  It  was  on  these  ethical  princi 
ples  that  Jefferson  based  a  life  which  was  noble, 
kindly,  generous,  dignified,  sympathetic,  and  true. 
There  is  but  one  testimony  from  the  host  of  friends, 
acquaintances,  and  visitors  who  enjoyed  the  hospi 
tality  of  the  master  of  Monticello,  that  he  himself 
was  the  pattern  of  the  righteous  man  described  in 
his  own  favorite  Psalm: 

"Lord,  who's  the  happy  man  that  may  to  thy  blest 

courts  repair, 
Not  stranger-like  to  visit  them,  but  to  inhabit  there? 

1  He  wrote  to  Colonel  Pickering  in  1822,  thanking  him  for  a  copy 
of  Channing's  sermons:  "Had  there  never  been  a  commentator  there 
never  would  have  been  an  infidel." 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

JTis  he  whose  every  thought  and  deed  by  rules  of  virtue 

moves, 
Whose  generous  tongue  disdains  to  speak  the  thing  his 

heart  disproves." 

Nevertheless,  Jefferson's  life  at  Monticello,  for 
all  the  love  and  veneration  that  surrounded  it,  was 
not  free  from  care.  Debt  dogged  his  footsteps  to 
the  grave.  The  portion  of  the  Wayles  property 
which  his  wife  brought  him  as  a  dowry  was  heavily 
encumbered,  and  before  he  had  finally  paid  off  his 
English  creditors  over  a  period  of  depreciated  cur 
rency  and  depressed  land  values,  the  debt  "swept 
away  nearly  half  of  the  estate."  During  his  forty 
years  of  frequent  absence  from  Monticello  in  his 
country's  service  his  farms  were  left  in  the  hands  of 
overseers.  When  he  returned  in  1809  to  take  charge 
of  his  property  in  person  a  series  of  misfortunes 
awaited  him.  Cold  weather  and  the  ravages  of  the 
Hessian  fly  reduced  the  crops  of  1810  and  1811.  The 
interruption  of  our  foreign  trade  by  the  Embargo 
and  Non-Intercourse  Acts  closed  valuable  markets 
to  his  tobacco  and  raised  the  price  of  necessary 
commodities,  like  farm  implements  and  clothing  for 
his  slaves,  to  a  ruinous  figure.  The  war  with  Great 
Britain  still  further  aggravated  the  distress  by  its 
close  blockade  of  Chesapeake  Bay.  And  when  the 
war  was  over  an  entirely  new  economic  adjustment 
followed.  The  fluid  capital  of  the  North  was  turned 
into  mills  and  factories.  The  planters  of  the  South 


JEFFERSON   IN   RETIREMENT       301 

carried  their  slaves  across  the  Alleghanies  into  the 
rich  (iulf  and  river  lands  of  the  Mississippi  Territory. 
The  value  of  the  upland  acres  sank,  and  the  farm 
ing  gentry  declined  before  the  rising  barons  of  the 
cotton  plantation.  There  is  no  more  pathetic  pic 
ture  in  our  economic  history  than  the  gradual  decay 
of  the  splendid  estates  of  the  old  families  of  Vir 
ginia,  whom  neither  poverty  nor  penury  could  wean 
from  their  generous  traditions  of  social  dignity  and 
limitless  hospitality. 

It  was  not  alone  the  inexorable  laws  of  economic 
displacement  that  brought  Jefferson  into  financial 
straits.  Rigid  economy  in  his  household  and  on 
his  estate  would  have  allowed  him  to  finish  his  days 
in  ease  and  comfort,  if  not  in  affluence.  But  Jeffer 
son  could  not  practise  economy.  He  had  expensive 
tastes.  He  loved  rare  books  and  fine  horses.  Even 
so  complete  a  connoisseur  as  Daniel  Webster  waxed 
enthusiastic  over  the  quality  of  his  wines.  He  was 
still  spending  considerable  sums  on  his  beloved  man 
sion  of  Monticello,  thirty  years  after  he  had  brought 
his  bride  to  its  new  chambers  through  the  deep  snow 
of  New  Year's  night,  1772.  The  doors  of  Monti- 
cello  were  never  closed  to  friend  or  stranger.  Be 
sides  his  own  numerous  family  of  dependants,  sis 
ters,  nephews,  nieces,  sons-in-law,  and  grandchildren, 
he  supported  a  constant  train  of  guests,  invited  and 
uninvited.  They  came  with  their  families  and  ser 
vants  and  horses  and  carriages.  They  stayed  for 


302  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

weeks  and  months.  His  daughter,  Mrs.  Randolph, 
told  of  preparing  as  many  as  fifty  beds  for  guests  on 
some  nights.  They  ate  his  good  food  and  drank 
his  choice  wines.  They  literally  devoured  his  sub 
stance,  like  the  suitors  in  Ulysses's  halls  at  Ithaca. 

The  vice-presidency  is  said  to  have  been  the  only 
public  position  occupied  by  Jefferson  in  which  he 
lived  within  his  official  salary.  He  left  the  presi 
dency  burdened  with  a  debt  of  twenty  thousand 
dollars,  and  had  to  apply  for  a  loan  at  a  Richmond 
bank  in  order  to  square  his  outstanding  accounts  in 
Washington  before  he  could  start  with  a  clear  con 
science  for  Monticello.  When  the  British  burned  the 
public  buildings  at  Washington,  in  1814,  he  offered 
to  sell  his  fine  collection  of  some  thirteen  thousand 
books  to  Congress,  at  the  valuation  which  a  com 
mittee  of  the  Houses  should  put  upon  them,  partly 
to  replace  the  Congressional  Library  which  had 
been  destroyed,  but  more  especially  to  get  a  tem 
porary  relief  from  pressing  creditors.  After  a  rather 
heated  debate  as  to  whether  the  books  of  the  "in 
fidel  Voltaire"  ought  to  be  purchased  with  the  pub 
lic  funds,  and  considerable  haggling  over  the  esti 
mated  worth  of  the  library,  Congress  finally  voted 
to  take  it  for  twenty-three  thousand  nine  hundred 
and  fifty  dollars,  which  was  probably  not  more  than 
half  its  value.  The  relief  was  but  temporary,  the 
pressure  of  the  debt  constant. 

At  the  opening  of  the  year  1826,  the  last  of  his 


JEFFERSON  IN  RETIREMENT       303 

life,  Jefferson's  financial  embarrassments  threatened 
to  drive  him  into  bankruptcy  and  the  loss  of  his 
estate.  In  despair  he  turned  to  the  Virginia  Legis 
lature,  asking  permission  to  sell  part  of  his  property 
by  lottery.  "If  it  can  be  yielded,"  he  wrote  to  a 
friend  in  the  legislature,  "I  can  save  the  house  of 
Monticello  and  a  farm  adjoining  to  end  my  days  in 
and  bury  my  bones."  His  countrymen  came  for 
ward  with  voluntary  subscriptions  to  save  his  estate. 
New  York  contributed  eight  thousand  five  hundred 
dollars,  Philadelphia  five  thousand  dollars,  Balti 
more  three  thousand  dollars.  The  project  of  the 
lottery  was  suspended,  and  the  immediate  demands 
were  met,  including  twenty  thousand  dollars  for 
which  Jefferson  became  liable  by  the  indorsement  of 
his  friend  Wilson  Gary  Nicholas's  note  in  1819. 
The  aged  statesman  was  fortunately  left  to  end  his 
days  under  the  happy  delusion  that  this  "pure  and 
unsolicited  offering  of  love"  by  his  fellow  country 
men  would  suffice  not  only  to  pay  off  all  his  debts 
but  to  leave  his  dependants  in  ease  at  Monticello. 
The  subscriptions  ceased,  however,  and  six  months 
after  Jefferson's  death  the  costly  furniture,  pictures, 
china,  and  silver  of  Monticello  were  put  up  at  auc 
tion  to  help  meet  the  debt  of  forty  thousand  dollars 
on  the  estate.  Jefferson's  only  surviving  child,  his 
daughter,  Mrs.  Randolph,  was  forced  to  leave  the 
beautiful  mansion  over  which  she  had  presided  for 
nearly  forty  years,  and  was  saved  from  utter  desti- 


304  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

tution  in  her  declining  days  only  by  the  generosity 
of  the  legislatures  of  South  Carolina  and  Louisiana, 
each  of  which  made  her  a  grant  of  ten  thousand 
dollars.  Monticello  passed  into  the  hands  of 
strangers. 

Jefferson  found  relief  from  the  financial  worries  of 
his  declining  years  in  absorbing  devotion  to  the  no 
blest  work  of  his  noble  life,  the  establishment  of  a 
great  liberal  and  democratic  university.  "A  sys 
tem  of  general  instruction,"  he  wrote  in  1818,  "which 
shall  reach  every  description  of  our  citizens,  from 
the  highest  to  the  poorest,  as  it  was  the  earliest, 
so  it  will  be  the  latest,  of  all  the  public  concerns 
in  which  I  shall  permit  myself  to  take  an  interest." 
In  season  and  out  of  season,  at  home  and  abroad, 
in  the  midst  of  public  duties  and  in  retirement  at 
Monticello,  he  spread  the  doctrine  of  popular  edu 
cation  with  the  fervor  of  an  apostle:  " Preach,  my 
dear  sir,  a  crusade  against  ignorance,"  he  wrote  to 
George  Wythe  from  Paris  in  1786.  "Establish  and 
improve  the  law  for  educating  the  common  people. 
Let  our  countrymen  know  that  the  people  alone  can 
protect  us  against  these  evils."1  In  his  annual 
message  to  Congress  in  1806  he  declared  that  edu 
cation  should  be  "placed  among  the  articles  of  pub 
lic  care,"  and  recommended  "a  national  establish- 

1  Jefferson  is  speaking  in  this  part  of  his  letter  of  the  miseries  with 
which  the  rich  and  favored  land  of  France  is  burdened  by  its  Court, 
its  nobility,  and  its  priesthood,  because  the  people  are  too  ignorant 
to  realize  and  too  passive  to  throw  off  their  abject  condition. 


JEFFERSON  IN  RETIREMENT       305 

ment  for  education  ...  a  public  institution  which 
could  apply  those  sciences  ...  all  the  parts  of 
which  contribute  to  the  improvement  of  the  coun 
try,  and  some  of  them  to  its  preservation." 

But  the  idea  of  a  national  university  found  no 
more  favor  with  Congress  than  had  the  scheme  of 
public  schools  with  the  burgesses  and  the  county 
courts  of  Virginia.  It  was  not  until  Jefferson,  freed 
from  the  burdens  of  office,  bent  his  whole  energy  to 
the  cause  of  the  education  of  his  countrymen  that 
the  opposition  of  generations  of  social  and  religious 
prejudice  began  to  yield  to  the  persuasion  of  his 
faith.  A  few  important  men,  including  Madison, 
Monroe,  W.  C.  Nicholas,  James  Breckenridge,  Peter 
Carr,  supported  him  faithfully,  but  the  one  person 
without  whose  constant  co-operation  Jefferson  could 
hardly  have  succeeded  in  founding  the  University 
of  Virginia  was  Joseph  C.  Cabell,  a  brilliant  young 
lawyer  who  had  travelled  widely  in  Europe  studying 
schools  and  universities,  and  who  for  eighteen  years 
in  the  Senate  of  Virginia  (1811-29)  fought  a  noble 
battle  for  the  encouragement  of  higher  education 
by  the  State.  Jefferson  and  Cabell  worked  together 
in  perfect  harmony.  Their  correspondence  pertain 
ing  to  the  foundation  of  the  university  was  pub 
lished  anonymously  at  Richmond  on  CabelPs  death 
in  1856.  It  fills  three  hundred  and  seventy-seven 
octavo  pages ! 

Jefferson  would  have  liked  to  see  his  alma  mater , 


306 y  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

**~~~s 

William  and  Mary  College,  converted  into  a  liberal 
non-sectarian  university;  but  the  traditions  of  that 
ancient,  endowed  seat  of  Anglicanism  were  too 
strong  to  be  overcome.  A  new  centre  of  learning 
had  to  be  created.  With  the  aid  of  voluntary  sub 
scriptions  from  a  group  of  nine  gentlemen  interested 
in  his  scheme,  contributing  himself  a  thousand  dol 
lars  which  he  could  not  spare,  Jefferson  rescued  the 
old  Albemarle  Academy  at  Charlottesville  from  a 
moribund  condition,  and  got  the  legislature  to  in 
corporate  the  institution,  in  February,  1816,  under 
the  name  of  the  Central  College.  Three  years  later 
the  college  was  widened  into  the  University  of  Vir 
ginia,  a  board  of  visitors  was  chosen,  and  Thomas 
Jefferson  was  unanimously  elected  rector.  From 
that  March  meeting  of  1819  until  his  death,  seven 
years  later,  he  labored  unremittingly  to  build  up  a 
university  which  should  be  an  ornament  to  his 
State  and  a  centre  of  liberal  learning.  He  himself 
chose  the  sites  and  drew  the  plans  for  the  buildings, 
selected  the  bricks  and  timber,  imported  workers 
from  Italy  to  carve  the  capitals  of  the  columns. 
Almost  every  day  he  rode  over  to  Charlottesville, 
four  miles  from  Monticello,  and  remained  for  hours 
seated  on  a  folding  camp-stool  of  his  own  invention, 
superintending  the  building  of  his  precious  halls. 
When  he  could  not  go,  he  watched  the  work  through 
a  telescope  mounted  on  one  of  the  terraces  at  Mon 
ticello.  "He  spent  almost  as  much  pains  on  the 


JEFFERSON  IN  RETIREMENT       307 

great  rotunda  of  the  central  hall  of  the  college/'  says 
Herbert  Baxter  Adams,  "as  Michael  Angelo  did  on 
the  dome  of  St.  Peter's."  And  he  had  the  great 
satisfaction  of  living  to  see  the  university  opened 
to  its  first  class  of  students  in  the  spring  of  the  year 
1825. 

The  University  of  Virginia  was  the  most  liberal 
institution  of  learning  in  the  world.1  Its  curriculum 
was  wholly  elective.  There  were  no  religious  tests 
for  professors  or  pupils.  Attendance  at  chapel  was 
voluntary.  The  modern  languages  and  the  sciences 
stood  on  a  par  with  the  classics  and  mathematics. 
The  honor  system  in  examinations  and  student  self- 
government  in  discipline  were  adopted.  The  uni 
versity  was  divided  into  a  number  of  "schools,"  so 
that  specialization  could  begin  with  the  pupil's  en 
trance.  There  was  no  president  of  the  faculty. 
The  professors  stood  on  an  equality  and  exercised  a 
chairmanship  in  turn.  Physical  training  was  com 
pulsory.  Agriculture  and  the  science  of  government 
were  for  the  first  ^ime  recognized  as  subjects  worthy 
of  a  place  in  a  university  curriculum.  Students  of 
theological  schools  were  invited  to  attend  the  uni 
versity,  enjoying  the  privilege  of  the  lectures,  the 
library,  and  "any  other  accommodations  we  can 
give  them."  "By  bringing  the  sects  together,  and 

1  Jefferson  wrote  Mr.  Roscoe  on  December  7,  1820:  "The  institu 
tion  will  be  based  on  the  illimitable  freedom  of  the  human  mind. 
For  here  we  are  not  afraid  to  follow  the  truth  wherever  it  may  lead, 
nor  to  tolerate  any  error,  so  long  as  reason  is  left  free  to  combat  it." 


308  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

mixing  them  with  the  mass  of  other  students/'  said 
Jefferson,  "we  shall  soften  their  asperities,  liberalize 
and  neutralize  their  prejudices,  and  make  the  gen 
eral  religion  a  religion  of  peace,  reason,  and  moral 
ity."  The  student  of  the  history  of  education  stands 
amazed  at  the  "modernness"  of  the  various  mea 
sures  which  Jefferson  recommended  in  his  famous 
series  of  reports  as  rector  of  the  University  of  Vir 
ginia.  Some  of  these  measures  have  been  adopted 
by  us  only  yesterday,  as  it  were;1  others  still  wait 
until,  to  use  Jefferson's  phrase,  "the  public  mind 
can  bear  them." 

The  influence  of  Jefferson  and  his  co-workers  in 
the  cause  of  higher  education  extended  far  beyond 
the  boundaries  of  Virginia.  The  University  of 
Michigan,  the  first  of  that  splendid  group  of  pio 
neer  colleges  in  our  Western  States,  was  founded  by 
Jefferson's  friend,  Judge  Woodward,  of  Michigan 
Territory,  in  full  sympathy  with  the  Jeffersonian 
principles.  The  new  State  of  Maine  (1820)  inserted 
in  its  constitution  a  "literary  article"  for  the  "gen 
eral  diffusion  of  the  advantages  of  education" 
through  the  State,  which  the  president  of  the  con 
stitutional  convention  and  first  governor  of  Maine, 
William  King,  acknowledged  that  he  owed  to  Jef- 

1  For  example,  the  recent  arrangement  between  Union  Theological 
Seminary  and  Columbia  University,  by  which  Jefferson's  plan  of 
the  interchange  of  courses  between  the  religious  and  the  secular  in 
stitutions  was  adopted,  nearly  a  hundred  years  after  his  suggestion, 
as  a  "new  departure"  in  education. 


JEFFERSON  IN  RETIREMENT       309 

ferson's  suggestion  during  a  visit  to  the  "hospitable 
mansion  "  of  Monticello  the  previous  winter.  George 
Ticknor,  another  welcome  guest  at  Monticello,  took 
back  to  his  new  professorship  at  Harvard  valuable 
advice  on  the  advantages  of  the  elective  system  and 
the  emphasis  on  the  study  of  the  modern  languages. 
Herbert  Baxter  Adams  could  well  call  the  University 
of  Virginia  "the  noblest  work  of  Jefferson's  life," 
marking  "the  continuation  of  his  personal,  vitaliz 
ing  influence  in  Virginia  and  in  the  country  at  large 
more  truly  than  any  other  of  his  original  creations." 
It  was  not  a  merely  professional  scientific  motive 
that  led  Jefferson  to  devote  himself  with  such  zeal  to 
the  cause  of  education  in  Virginia  and  the  country 
at  large.  ^  The  enlightenment  of  the  people  was  for 
him  the  corner-stone  of  the  structure  of  democracy,  v 
hence  a  system  of  free,  popular  education  was  a 
chief  article  in  his  political  creed,  j  In  the  admirable 
preamble  to  the  revisers'  bill  of  1779,  "For  the  more 
general  diffusion  of  knowledge,"  he  declared  that 
even  under  the  best  forms  of  government  ythose  in 
trusted  with  power  had  sometimes  perverted  that 
power  into  tyranny.  (''The  most  effectual  means 
of  preventing  this,"  he  continued,  "would  be  to  illu 
minate  as  far  as  practicable  the  minds  of  the  people 
at  large,  and  more  especially  to  give  them  knowledge 
of  those  facts  which  history  exhibiteth,  that,  pos 
sessed  thoroughly  of  the  experience  of  other  ages 
and  countries,  they  may  be  enabled  to  know  ambi- 


310  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

tion  under  all  its  shapes,  and  prompt  to  exert  their 
natural  powers  to  defeat  its  purposes.)'  And  again 
in  his  Notes  on  Virginia  he  wrote:  "Every  govern 
ment  degenerates  when  trusted  to  the  rulers  of  the 
people  alone.  The  people  themselves  are  its  only 
safe  depositories.  And  to  render  even  them  safe, 
their  minds  must  be  improved  to  a  certain  degree. 
...  It  has  been  thought  that  corruption  is  re 
strained  by  confining  the  right  of  suffrage  to  a  few 
of  the  wealthier  people,  but  it  would  be  more  effec 
tually  restrained  by  an  extension  of  that  right  to 
such  numbers  as  would  bid  defiance  to  the  means 
of  corruption."  j 

Finally,  to  complement  and  justify  Jefferson's 
conviction  that  the  political  health  of  a  people  de 
pends  on  its  own  enlightened  participation  in  gov 
ernment,  and  that  "no  nation,"  as  he  nobly  wrote 
in  his  rectorial  report  of  1821,  "is  permitted  to  live 
in  ignorance  with  impunity,"  came  his  faith  in  the 
illuministic  philosophy  of  the  perfectibility  of  the 
human  mind.  "We  should  be  far  from  the  per 
suasion  that  man  is  fixed  by  the  law  of  his  nature 
at  a  given  point,"  he  wrote  to  the  Virginia  Legislature 
in  1818,  "that  his  improvement  is  a  chimera  and 
the  hope  delusive,  of  making  himself  wiser,  happier, 
or  better  than  our  forefathers  were.  ...  As  well 
might  it  be  urged  that  the  wild  and  uncultivated 
tree,  hitherto  yielding  sour  and  bitter  fruit  only, 
can  never  be  made  to  yield  better.  ...  It  cannot 


JEFFERSON  IN  RETIREMENT       311 

be  but  each  generation  must  advance  the  knowledge 
and  well-being  of  mankind,  not  infinitely  as  some 
have  said,  but  indefinitely  and  to  a  term  which  no 
man  can  fix  and  foresee.'^ 

To  the  end  of  his  days  Jefferson  maintained  his 
faith  in  the  essential  accuracy  and  justice  of  the 
judgment  of  the  mass  of  the  "  common  people."  For 
him  the  people  were  not  an  object  for  government 
to  play  upon,  as  it  were,  but  government  itself  was 
a  function  of  the  people.  Liberty  was  not  a  privi 
lege  granted  by  the  government,  but  government 
was  a  responsibility  delegated  to  its  officers  by  the 
people.  On  this  distinction  hangs  all  the  philosophy 
of  democracy.  The  last  letter  penned  by  Jeffer 
son's  aged  and  trembling  hand  was  a  summons  to 
his  countrymen  to  renew  with  "  undiminished  de 
votion"  their  faith  in  the  rights  of  man  and  the 
blessings  of  self-government.  The  last  word  and 
gesture  of  his  ebbing  life  was  a  hand  raised  feebly 
and  the  murmur:  "Warn  the  committee  to  be  on 
the  alert."  He  died  as  he  had  lived,  under  the  in 
spiring  compulsion  of  a  single  great  aim — human 
freedom.  Freedom  was  the  text  of  his  life:  "I  have 
sworn  upon  the  altar  of  God  eternal  hostility  against 
every  form  of  tyranny  over  the  mind  of  man." 
Freedom  was  the  burden  of  his  labors:  "I  endeavor 
to  keep  attention  fixed  on  the  main  object  of  all 
science,  the  freedom  and  happiness  of  man."  Free 
dom  was  the  legacy  for  which  alone  he  wished  to 


312  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

be  remembered  by  his  countrymen — freedom  in 
government,  freedom  in  creed,  freedom  in  intellect. 
And  so  he  wrote  the  epitaph  which  is  inscribed  upon 
the  shaft  that  stands  above  his  grave: 

HERE   WAS   BURIED 
THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

AUTHOR 

OF  THE   DECLARATION  OF 

AMERICAN   INDEPENDENCE 

THE   STATUTE   OF  VIRGINIA 

FOR  RELIGIOUS   FREEDOM   AND 

FATHER  OF  THE   UNIVERSITY   OF  VIRGINIA 


Thomas  Jefferson  was  not  perfect.  Who  of  mor 
tals  is?  We  can  find  flaws  in  his  nature  and  faults 
in  his  character,  errors  of  judgment  and  inconsis 
tencies  of  behavior.  He  was  not  endowed  with  a 
sense  of  humor,  which  would  have  saved  him  in 
many  a  humiliating  situation.  His  passion  for 
humanitarian  philosophy  and  radical  democracy 
blinded  him  sometimes  to  the  honesty  of  purpose 
and  character  of  excellent  men  who  differed  from 
him.  He  had  a  congenital  and  unconquerable  aver 
sion  to  combativeness  which  his  unfavorable  critics 
have  usually  called  "weakness"  or  "cowardice." 
At  the  same  time  his  conviction  of  the  necessity  of 
having  the  political  battles  fought  kept  him  urging 


JEFFERSON  IN  RETIREMENT       313 

others  to  the  fray — a  policy  of  indirection  which  has 
brought  on  him  the  charge  of  hypocrisy  and  finesse, 
of  shielding  himself  behind  his  agents,  and  employ 
ing  his  friends  as  catspaws  to  pull  his  hot  political 
chestnuts  from  the  fire.  The  man  of  speech  who 
stands  up  in  the  battle  of  debate,  giving  and  taking 
hard  blows,  looks  a  little  askance  on  the  man  of  the 
pen  who  carries  on  his  campaign  by  private  letters 
and  quiet  interviews,  as  if  he  must  be  engaged  in 
"shady"  dealings.  And  yet  a  private  letter  may 
be  as  honest  as  a  harangue  on  the  floor  of  Con 
gress,  and  an  after-dinner  conversation  as  guileless 
as  a  campaign  speech.  The  voluminous  correspon 
dence  of  Jefferson  is  naturally  not  free  from  the  re 
grettable  expressions  in  which  a  man,  whose  political 
creed  is  as  sacred  to  him  as  a  religious  faith,  pours 
out  his  soul  to  a  friend  against  the  wickedness  of  his 
adversaries.  The  Mazzei  letter  and  the  Anas  would 
better  not  have  been  written.  And  yet  these  in 
stances  are  few.  The  sixteen  thousand  letters  of 
Jefferson  that  have  been  preserved  to  us  are  a  pre 
cious  heritage.  They  give  us  the  portrait  of  a  man 
of  just  mind  and  spotless  honor ,  a  kindly,  generous, 
sagacious,  patient  man,  marvellously  gifted,  tire 
lessly  active,  holding  the  faith  in  democracy  through 
good  and  evil  days,  persevering  and  noble  in  his 
aims,  and  all  his  ends  his  country's  and  mankind's. 
Shortly  after  noon  on  July  4,  1826,  the  fiftieth 
anniversary  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence, 


314  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

Jefferson  died  peacefully  at  Monticello,  surrounded 
by  an  adoring  family.  Far  away  to  the  north,  in 
the  little  town  of  Quincy,  Massachusetts,  another 
great  American  patriot  and  signer  of  the  Declaration 
of  Independence  lay  on  his  death-bed  that  same 
day.  John  Adams  lingered  till  sunset.  The  last 
whispered  words  of  his  failing  breath  were:  "Thomas 
Jefferson  still  lives."  Thomas  Jefferson  had  al 
ready  passed  away  from  earth,  but  John  Adams's 
words  were  true,  and  will  be  true  so  long  as  men 
shall  strive  for  peace,  fraternity,  and  freedom. 


INDEX 


Adams,  Henry,  214,  218,  224,  260, 

272 

Adams,  Herbert  B.,  307,  309 
Adams,  John,  30/.,  41,  44,  54,  99, 

101,  111.  112, 113,  115, 126,  138 /., 

158,  165  n.,  172,  182,  188,  195 /., 

200,  204  /.,  208  /.,  215  /.,  245,  249, 

257,  297,  314 
Adams,  Samuel,  13,  44 
Albemarle  County,  3,  10,   13,  24, 

27,  95 

Alexander  I,  269 

Allen  Acts,  200 /.,  214,  218,  250 
Ames,  Fisher,  175,  203 
Amiens,  Treaty  of,  229,  263,  272 
Anas,  The,  154,  159,  211,  290,  313 
Arnold,   Benedict,  66,  82,  86,  94, 

95,  98 

Articles  of  Confederation,  98 
Astor,  J.  J.,  281 

Bainbridge,  Captain,  220 
Bank,  National,  161  /. 
Barbary  States,  118/.,  273 
BarbeXMarbois,  122,  230 
Bayard,  James  A.,  210  n.,  219 
Berkeley,  Admiral,  268 
Berlin  Decree,  267,  271 
Bernard,    Governor   of  Massachu- 

sets,  13 

Blennerhassett,  259 
Bonaparte  (see  Napoleon) 
Botetourt,    Governor    of   Virginia, 

14,  17 

Braddock's  Defeat,  3 
Brissot  de  Warville,  139 
Bryant,  Wm.  C.,  278 
Bryce,  James,  70 
Bunker  Hill,  31.  263 
Burgesses,   House  of,  2/.,   12,   20, 

28 /.,  33,  56,  67,  291 
Burgoyne,  General,  76 
Burke,  Edmund,  18,  22,  187,  251 
Burr,  Aaron,  195,  206,  208  /.,  219 /., 

243,  247,  252,  258 /. 
Burr,  Theodosia,  259 


Cabell,  J.  C.,  305 /. 

Canning,  George,  269  /.,  275,  288 


Carr,  Dabney,  17 
Carrington,  Edward,  129 
Channing,  Edward,  181,  231, 241  n., 

277  n. 

Charles  II,  1,  55 
Charles  III,  of  Spain,  235,  237 
Chase,  Samuel,  201,  250 /.,  261 
Chastellux,  Marquis  of,  102 
Chesapeake  Affair,  263 /.,  268 /. 
Cicero,  4,  174 

Clay,  Henry,  7,  34,  259,  289 
Clay,  John,  34 
Clinton.  General,  76/.,  88 
Clinton,  George,  165  n.,  243,  280 
Coles,  Edward,  92,  292 
Columbia  University,  308  n. 
Committees     of     Correspondence, 

20 /. 

Committees  of  Public  Safety.  27  n. 
Common  Sense,  38 
Concord  Bridge,  11,  31 
Congress,  of  the  Confederation,  103, 

104,  147,  157 
Constitution,  of  the  United  States, 

126 /.,   149 /.,   161 /.,   184.  201 /., 

218,  252 /.,  283 

Continental  Congress,  22,  26/.,  36 /. 
Convention  Parliament,  26 
Cornwallis,  General,  66, 79,  80,  87  /.. 

90,  92,  94,  101 

Craig,  Governor  of  Canada,  277 
Curtis,  W.  E.,  132,  171  n. 

Danton,  178 

Dayton,  Jonathan,  188 

Deane,  Silas,  48,  57 

Dearborn,  General,  295 

Declaration  of  Independence,  41  /.„ 
72,  141,  166,  211,  235,  250,  291, 
313 /. 

Declaration  on  Colonies  Taking  up 
Arms,  32  /. 

De  Meusnier,  110,  123 

Democratic-Republicans  (see  Re 
publicans) 

Desmoulins,  Camille,  132 

Dickinson,  John,  21  n.,  31  /.,  37, 
40,  42  /. 

Dickinson,  Lowes,  173 


315 


316 


INDEX 


Dorchester,  Lord,  188 

Dunmore,  Governor  of  Virginia,  17, 

28/.,  35 
Dupont  de  Nemours,  217,  228 

East  India  Company,  18 
Eaton,  General,  259 
Embargo  Act,  275 /.,  282,  300 
Eppes,  Francis,  36,  134,  156 
Eppes,  John,  287 
Eppes,  Maria,  16 
Essex  Case,  265  /. 
Essex  Junto,  215,  217 

"Family  Compact,"  146 

Farewell  Address,  195,  222 

Fauquier,  Governor  of  Virginia,  5 

Federalists,  165,  175,  178,  185, 
192 /.,  198 /.,  206,  210,  215 /., 
219,  234,  242,  244,  249,  277 /.,  295 

Fenno,  John,  162 

Florida  (see  West  Florida) 

Florida  Blanca,  146 

Fox,  C.  J.,  266 /. 

France,  aids  America,  48/.,  77,  97; 
our  commerce  with,  112/.,  116, 
165,  187;  our  diplomacy  with, 
197 /.  (see  also  French  Revolu 
tion  and  Napoleon);  our  treaties 
with  (see  Treaties) ;  war  with,  204 

Franklin.  Benjamin,  37  n.,  41,  43, 
45,  48,  57,  99,  101,  112/.,  115,  121, 
136,  138.  147,  297 

Frederick  the  Great,  131 

French  Revolution,  47,  117,  123 /., 
132 /.,  135,  139,  164 /.,  183,  186 /., 
193,  215,  295  /. 

Freneau,  Philip,  162 /.,  211 

Gage,  Governor  of  Massachusetts, 

22 
Gallatin,  Albert,  218,  221,  258,  273, 

279 

Gaspee,  16 

Gates,  General,  80/.,  87,  217 
Genet,    Edmond,    166 /.,    184,    187, 

189 
George  III,  11,18,  22/.,29,  31,  41/., 

47,  67,  133,  139,  271,  291 
Gerry,  Elbridge,  106,  197 /.,  202 
Goethe,  4 

Greene,  General,  87/.,  94 
Grenville,  George,  10 
Grey,  Captain,  223 

"Hail  Columbia,"  199 

Halifax,  14 

Hamilton,      Alexander,     71,      128, 


151 /.,  169,  173,  175,  181,  189, 
191,  195  /.,  202  /.,  208  /.,  211,  215, 
217,  219,  232,  243,  258,  289 

Hammond,  John,  143 

Hancock,  John,  43 

Harrison,  Benjamin,  34,  43 

Hartford  Convention,  289 

Harvard  College,  309 

Harvey,  John,  4 

Hastings,  Warren,  6,  251 

Hay,  George,  262 

Heath,  General,  246 

Henry,  John,  277 

Henry,  Patrick,  8,  12  /.,  15,  17,  21  /., 
27,  34,  62  n.,  75,  91,  133 

Hillsborough,  Lord,  13 

"Holy  Alliance,"  288 

Hopkinson,  Francis,  127,  151 

Howe,  General,  76 

Jackson,  Andrew,  214,  239,  259, 
279 

Jay,  John.  30,  37,  40,  99,  101,  104, 
117,  126,  136,  138,  180,  187 /., 
199.  208,  211 

Jefferson,  Martha  Skelton,  16,  100 

Jefferson,  Peter,  2  /. 

Jefferson,  Thomas,  birth,  2;  edu 
cation,  5/.;  as  lawyer,  8;  as 
squire,  9/.;  elected  to  burgess 
es,  13/.;  resists  governor,  17; 
on  power  of  Parliament,  21 ;  the 
Summary  View,  22  /.;  on  Com 
mittee  of  Public  Safety,  27;  an 
swer  to  Lord  North,  29/.;  in 
Congress,  30/.;  and  religious 
liberty,  34,  61/.,  295 /.;  house 
hold  at  Monticello,  36,  300  /.; 
Declaration  of  Independence,  41  /.; 
declines  mission  to  Paris,  48,  57; 
political  theories,  49/.;  reforms 
Virginia  laws,  56/.;  and  emanci 
pation,  67/.,  290  /.;  and  educa 
tion,  68/.,  304  /.;  Governor  of 
Virginia,  75/.;  Western  land 
sessions,  97/.;  retirement,  99; 
accepts  mission  to  France,  102; 
delayed,  103;  in  Congress  again, 
103/.;  plan  for  territorial  govern 
ment  107  /.;  French  mission, 
112/.;  minister  to  France,  115/.; 
Mediterranean  policy,  118/., 
220 /.,  242;  and  French  Revolu 
tion,  123  /.;  views  on  Constitution^ 
of  U.  S.,  126 /.,  ISO/.;  on  repub 
licanism,  130,  139,  169;  secretary 
of  State,  135 /.;  negotiations 
with  England,  143 /.;  interest  in 


INDEX 


317 


West,  145 /.,  223,  239;  contest 
with  Hamilton,  152 /.;  curbs 
Gen6t,  167/.;  resigns,  169  /.; 
builds  Republican  party,  173 /.; 
financial  theories,  181;  democ 
racy,  183,  283,  311  /.;  on  Jay 
Treaty,  189;  on  Whiskey  War, 
193 /.;  Vice-President,  195;  on  X 
Y  Z  Affair,  198  /.;  on  Alien  and 
Sedition  Acts,  201  /.;  election  of 
1800,  206 /.;  as  President,  213 /.; 
purchases  Louisiana,  223 /.;  on 
West  Florida,  237 /.,  252  /.; 
Lewis  and  Clark  Expedition, 
239 /.;  re-elected,  242  /.;  prose 
cutes  judges,  250 /.;  Burr  trial," 
258  /.;  Chesapeake  Affair,  266 /.; 
Embargo  policy,  275 /.;  retire 
ment,  280  /.;  on  War  of  1812, 
288  /.;  on  Missouri  Compromise, 
290 /.;  religious  beliefs,  295  /.; 
at  Monticello,  300/.,*  character, 
312 /. 

Kentucky  Resolutions,  201 /.,  216, 

219,  244,  279 
King,    Rufus,    199,   203,    224,    243, 

263  /.,  280 
King,  William,  308 
Knox,  Henry,  152,  188 
Kosciusko,  288 

Lafayette,    General.    88,    89,    121, 

124 /.,  133,  295 
Laurens,  Henry,  99,  101 
Laws  of  Virginia,  55  /. 
Lecky,  W.  E.  H.,  49 
Leclerc,  General,  224 
Ledyard,  William,  223 
Lee,  Arthur,  48 
Lee,  Henry,  83  /. 
Lee,  R.  H.,  40,  62  n.,  179 
Lee,  T.  L.,  57  n.,  65 
Leslie,  General,  66 
Lewis    and    Clark   Expedition,  99, 

239  /.,  281 
Lexington,  battle  of,  11,  31,  [263, 

268 

Liancourt,  Duke  of,  214 
Lincoln,  Abraham,  52,  74,  110,  153, 

185 

Lincoln,  General,  13,  66 
Lincoln,  Levi,  210  n.,  217 
Livingston,  Edward,  235 
Livingston,    R.    R.,    40/.,    225 /., 

230 /. 

Locke,  John,  50 
Lodge,  Henry  Cabot,  152 


Louis   XIV,   48,    112,    116 /.,    124, 

164 /. 

Louisiana  Purchase,  72,  223  f.,  264 
Louisiana    Territory,    235  f.,    242, 

293 /. 

Luther,  Martin,  181 
Luzerne,  Marquis  of,  102 
Lyon,  Matthew,  242 

Macaulay,  Lord,  10 

McKean,  Governor  of  Pennsyl 
vania,  209,  243 

McLeod,  Captain,  92 

McMaster,  J.  B.,  140,  169,  203 

Madison,  James,  56,  62,  64,  66,  100, 
110,  116  n.,  125 /.,  147,  162,  168, 
172,  182,  183  n.,  196 /.,  206,  219, 
237,  250,  258,  273 /.,  280,  287 

Marbury  vs.  Madison,  250 

Marseillaise,  the,  47 

Marshall,  John,  2  n.,  7,  84/.,  118, 
141,  170,  178,  197 /.,  209,  250, 
261  /.,  290 

Martin,  Luther,  261  /. 

Mason,  George,  57  n.,  62  n.,  65, 
180 

Mazzei,  Philip,  313 

"Mediterranean  Fund,"  222 

Merry,  Anthony,  213,  258 

"Midnight  Judges,"  211  n. 

Milan  Decree,  270 

Mirabeau,  133 

Miranda,  204  n. 

Mississippi,  Navigation  of,  145 /., 
226 /. 

Missouri  Compromise,  68,  290 /. 

Mobile  Act,  238 

Mohammedan  pirates,  119/. 

Monroe,  James,  62  n.,  100,  103, 
126,  130,  140,  168.  182,  190 /., 
197,  209,  217,  224,  226 /.,  231 /., 
237,  266 /.,  280,  287 /. 

"Monticello,"  5n.,  15/.,  22,  24/., 

~3T/.,  70,  91,  93,  997102,  133 /., 

150,    169 /.,    182,    214,    238,   240, 

252,  284,  287,  299 /.,  306 /. 
Montmorin,  Count  of,  116 
Moore,  G.  H.,  33 

Morris,    Gouverneur,    104 /.,    138, 

143,  168,  203 
Morris,  Robert,  106,  153 
Morse,   J.   T.,   59  n.,   76,   84,   89/., 

95,  116,  273 

Napoleon  Bonaparte,  74,  142  n., 
186,  205,  223  /.,  228  /.,  234,  237  /., 

253,  256 /.,  264 /. 
Naturalization  Act,  200,  214,  218 


318 


INDEX 


Navigation  Acts,  11 

Nelson,  General,  82,  84,  91 

Nelson,  Lord,  266 

Newburgh  Address,  104 

Nicholas,    Wilson    Cary,    14,    182, 

256,  302 

Nicolas,  George,  95 
Non-intercourse  Act,  280,  300 
North,  Lord,  15,  28/.,  33,  49,  101 
Northwest  Territory,  98,  109 
Notes  on   Virginia,  54,  73,   121 /., 

291 /.,  310 

Odyssey,  248 

Orders  in  Council,  187,  269,  275 
Orleans,  Territory  of,  235 
Otis,  James,  44 /.,  54 

Paine,  Thomas,  38,  133 

Parkman,  Francis,  240 

Parton,  James,  114 

Pendleton,    Edmund,    59,    65,    71, 

139,  291 

Pickering,  John,  250 /. 
Pickering,  Timothy,  44,  191,   199, 

216,  277,  299  n. 
Pike,  Zebulon,  241  n. 
Pinckney,  C.  C.,  197 /.,  206,  208, 

243,  280 

Pinckney,  Charles,  150  n. 
Pinckney,  Thomas,  138,  148,  195, 

226 

Pinkney,  William,  266 /.,  276,  294 
Pitt,  William,  18,  46,  143,  266 
Polk,  J.  K.,  237,  241 
Primogeniture,  Laws  of,  55 

"Quids,"  256 

Randall,  H.  S.,  9,  39,  42,  76,  297 
Randolph,  Edmund,  2  n.,  25,  99, 

151,  177,  193 
Randolph,  Jane,  2 
Randolph,  John,  34 

Randolph,   John   of  Roanoke,   59, 

200,  219,  248  /.,  255  /.,  258,  261  /., 

270,  273 /.,  280 
Randolph,   Martha,   16,    113,    133, 

172.  302  /. 
Randolph,  Peyton,  12,  15,  22,  28/., 

34 

Randolph,  Thomas  Jefferson,  297 
Randolph,  William,  1 
Report  on  Public  Credit,  Hamilton's, 

152,  156,  160 

Republicans,  165,  172,  178,  182 /., 
190,  192 /.,  198 /.,  215 /.,  247 /., 
290 


Revolution,    American,    10,    65/., 

76/.,  101,  103,  141 
Revolution,    French     (see    French 

Revolution) 
Richelieu,  230 
Richmond,  27,  57  n.,  80,  82/.,  85, 

88,  261  /.,  305 
Robespierre,  186 
Rochambeau,  General,  189 
Rockingham,  Marquis  of,  101 
Roman  Law,  49 
Roosevelt,  Theodore,  279 
Rose,  George,  271,  277 
Rousseau,  49/.,  133,  180 
"  Rule  of  1756,"  187 
Rush,  Benjamin,  299 
Rutledge,  Edward,  30,  40,  141 
Rutledge,  John,  31 /. 

San  Ildefonso,  Treaty  of,  223 

Scott,  Sir  William,  265 

Sedition  Act,  182,  200  /. 

"Shadwell,"  5,  9,  12,  15 

Shays's  Rebellion,  131  /.,  178 

Shelburne,  Lord,  101 

Sherman,  Roger,  41,  106 

Short.  William,  178 
/'Slavery,  67/.,  110,  290 /. 
Vglave  Trade,  42,  56,  292 

Smith,  Robert,  271  /.,  279 

Stamp  Act,  ll/.,  21,  26,  46,  101 

Steuben.  Baron,  83/.,  87,  89 

Story,  Joseph,  214,  279 

Stuart,  Archibald,  145 

Sullivan,  General,  121 

Sullivan,   Governor  of  Massachu 
setts,  277 

Summary  View,  The,  22/.,  30,  49 

Supreme  Court,  152,  250 

Talleyrand,   197 /.,   204,   228,  230, 

253,  256 

Tallmadge,  James,  293  /. 
Tammany  Society,  164 
Tariff,  of  1789,  152,  180 
Tarleton,  General,  79,  90 /. 
Taylor,  John,  184,  202,  219,  275 
Tea,  Destruction  of,  19 
Tennis-Court  Oath,  26 
Texas,  237 

Thompson,  Charles,  43,  296  n. 
Thwaites,  R.  G.,  240 
Ticknor,  George,  309 
Tompkins,  Governor  of  New  York, 

279 

Tories,  46 

Toussaint  Louverture,  225 
Townshend,  Charles,  13,  18 


INDEX 


319 


Treaties,  of  1778,  166,  191,  199, 
205;  of  1783,  103,  105 /.,  149, 
191;  Jay  (1794),  142  n.t  189 /., 
199,  226,  263 /.;  Pinckney  (1795) 
142  n.,  148,  226;  of  1800,  142  n., 
205,  223;  Louisiana  Purchase 
(1803),  148  n.,  224 /. 

Turgot,  180 

Turreau,  268 

University  of  Virginia,  306  /. 

Vattel,  168 

Vergennes,  Count  of,  115,  146 
Victor,  General,  236 
Voltaire,  392 

Washington,  George,  2  n.,  15,  21  n., 
27,  30/.,  47,  62  n.,  78/.,  84/., 
88/.,  94/.,  104 /.,  114,  126,  129 /., 
133 /.,  141,  143,  145,  150,  152, 
157 /.,  160,  163 /.,  165  n.,  167, 


169 /.,    171  n.,    172 /.,    178,    185, 

189 /.,  191 /.,  199,  204,  207,  213, 

220,  222 /.,  244 /.,  250,  297 
Wayles,  John,  16 
Webster,  Daniel,  52,  118,  185,  214, 

301 

West  Florida,  238 /.,  252 /.,  272 
Whiskey  War,  192,  279 
Wilkinson,  General,  259  /. 
William  and  Mary  College,  5,  68, 

306 /. 
Williamsburg,  5/.,  21/.,  27,  29,  57, 

65/.,  177 
Wirt,  William,  13 
Wythe,  George,  7,  21  n.,  57  n.,  65, 

71,  122,  291,  304 

X  Y  Z  Affair,  197 /.,  204,  206,  216, 
263 

Yancey,  Charles,  69 

Yeardley,  Governor  of  Virginia,  2 

Yorktown,  47,  53,  66,  89,  97,  101 


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